provoke us unto obedience by a redoubled Reflexion on our Advantage What can be more for our Advantage or more agreeable to the Ambitions both of the Flesh and of the Spirit than to have our own wills and to be masters of all we have a mind to even all that we are able to want or pray for yet this is every mans portion who does so really love Christ as to keep his Commandments For so saith the Oracle which cannot ly or prevaricate Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name that will I do v. 13. and in the very next words If ye shall ask any thing in my name I will do it v. 14. A promise sufficient to make us startle unless we consider it long enough to grasp the whole of its Importance For we see 't is universal 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 if any thing and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 whatsoever we shall have what we ask without exception And universal as it is it is inculcated and insorc't by a sacred kind of Tautology From whence 't is obvious to inferr as it is useful to observe that although vain Repetitions are worthily blam'd by our blessed Saviour yet there are many Repetitions which are not vain It is so farr from being vain for our Lord here to tell us the same thing twice that 't is to rivet it in our memories and to imprint it in our minds And what is that which he desires may take so deep an Impression in us but that we shall have our own asking if we will but so love him as to keep his Commandments Compare the Text with the Context the condition of the promise with the promise it self and you will find that the scope of the whole is this If you will do my will I will not fail to do yours If ye will but hear me speaking to you in my Precepts I will be sure to hear you speaking to me in your Prayers Give me the little that I ask and you shall have your own asking Put your selves into a capacity of injoying as much as you can desire Apply your selves to such a course as by which ye may make me your own and have all my Mercies at your disposal For on condition that ye love me and keep my Commandments I will do what ye will have me setting no bounds unto my grant but what ye do to your Petitions That this is here our Saviours meaning will undeniably appear from those parallel words 1 Iohn 3. 22. Whatsoever we ask we receive of him because we keep his Commandments Not whilst but because Not at that time but for that reason Compare this again with those other expressions of Christ himself Iohn 15. 7. If ye abide in me and my words abide in you ye shall ask what ye will and it shall be don which is as if he should have said do you but keep my Commandments and ye shall have me at your Command for so run the words ask what ye will and it shall be don Let us be perfect in this point before we leave it For besides that there is nothing which more closely concerns the Text I mean as it stands in relation to the Context by how much the longer we think upon it we shall admire it so much the more Admit that we were to make the greatest promise to be imagin'd to Christ himself we could not go beyond this Lord ask what thou wilt and it shall be don And yet the very same thing saith He to us ask what ye will and it shall be don if ye will but so love me as to keep my Commandments Sect. 13. Where now lyes the difference betwixt God's doing our will and our doing His since he is pleas'd to bind himself by such an astonishing kind of promise no less than 4 times repeated in the very same Sermon that all we ask shall be don ask what we will Certainly the difference is only this that God does satisfie our wills by way of answer to our Petitions and we do Homage unto His by way of Answer to his Commands His compliance with us is an act of Grace and ours with Him an act of Duty God reveals his will to us by way of Empire and Exaction because he is our Creator and we the work of his Hands We exhibit our wills to Him by way of Intreaty and Supplication because he is as our Potter and we his clay In this then we differ that we intreat whilst he Commands but in this we agree that we would have our wills don He by us and we by Him Nay what will ye say if he intreates us too as earnestly as we do him It is the saying of S. Paul 2 Cor. 5. 20. We are Embassadors for Christ as though God did beseech you by us we pray you in Christ's stead be ye reconciled unto God Here is God ye see beseeching us and Jesus Christ praying to us for what he does by his Embassadors he truly does that having don him all the wrong we will admit of a Reconcilement that is to say that we will love him and keep his Commandments Herein then consisteth the great Advantage of our obedience that whilst 't is doing God's will it moveth God to do ours Which must not be accus'd as a bold expression because we are taught it by God himself For if we keep his Commandments we shall abide in his love Iohn 15. 10. And if we abide in his love all we ask shall be don ask what we will Iohn 15. 7. Sect. 14. But here it may easily be objected to all that hath hitherto been spoken that however our Saviour hath made this Promise yet not one of his Disciples hath ever seen its Performance For where is he in all the world who can say his Petitions have all been granted how many sick and poor Christians have pray'd to Christ for health and honour who yet have dyed of their diseases in perfect beggary and dropt unregarded into a grave of forgetfulness and obscurity Sect. 15. The Answer to this will be short and obvious That the great and precious promise is not absolute but conditional Had the promise been absolute the objection brought to it had not been capable of an Answer it would not lye in our power to clear our Saviour from breach of Promise But the promise being conditional is more or less to be perform'd by him that made it as the condition shall be observed by them on whom it is injoyn'd Now thus stands the Case betwixt our Saviour and our selves In the two next verses before my Text and Iohn 15. 7. we have a general promise bestowed on his part and in the words next after we have a reasonable condition requir'd on Ours The promise is on his part that we shall have what we ask ask what we will The Condition is on ours that we abide in him and that his words abide in us that we love him so farr as to
at agreement among themselves but from a principle of Policy and not of Love Even Rebells and Schismaticks the greatest enemies of Church and state are wont to hold together and keep themselves close but from a principle of Faction and not of Love We read of Pilate and Herod that they were solemnly made friends but from a principle of Hatred to an innocent Christ not of love to one another The world is full of such Merchants as keep a good correspondence and are punctual Dealers with one another but from a principle of Traffick and not of true love The friends of Ceres and Bacchus have their times of Feasting and good-fellowship their times of injoying the Creature-Comforts but from a principle of loosness and not of Love Many love the merry meeting but not the men whom they meet Or if they are Lovers of the men 't is from a principle of Nature and not of Grace It being a meer Self-love which makes them so to love Others Nay farther yet a man may do the very things which are the principal offices and works of Love for which not his Love but only his vanity is to be thank't He may bestow his whole substance to feed the poor and yet may perish for want of Love May dare to dye a pretended Martyr by giving his body to be burnt and yet may be frozen for want of Love So I collect from the Apostle 1 Cor. 13. 3. Sect. 7. It concerns us therefore to know what love this is having seen what it is not by which a man may be known to be Christs Disciple And the shortest way to know this is to reflect a little while on the Love of Christ. For such as was his Love to us such must ours be to Him and to one another We have his word for it in several places If ye keep my Commandments ye shall abide in my love And this is my Commandment that ye love one another even as I have loved you Now we know the Love of Christ was both Extensively and Intensively great and proposed in both respects not more to our Wonder than Imitation First it was so Extensively Great as as that it reached to all in general 1 Tim. 4. 10. to every man in particular Heb. 2. 9. not to a world of men only as that may signifie a part but to all the whole world without exception 1 Ioh. 2. 2. without exception of the ungodly Rom. 5. 6. without exception of enemies Rom. 5. 10. without exception of them that perish 2 Pet. 2. 1. And so Intensively great was the Love of Christ that it made him empty himself of glory and become of no reputation it made him a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief indeed an Intimate Acquaintance of the most heart-breaking grief that ever was suffered on this side Hell It put him upon the vassalage of washing and wiping his servants feet It made him obedient unto the Death and to seek the lives of his Enemies whilst his enemies sought his He in order to their safety as they in order to his Ruin It made him once our Priest after the order of Aaron and our Priest for ever after the order of Melchisedeck For us he descended into Hell for us he ascended into Heaven for us he maketh intercession at the right hand of God Rom. 8. 34. Sect. 8. Thus Christ as our Master hath set us a Copy of His Love to the end that we as his Disciples might do our utmost to take it out Our Love must be so extensive that it must reach even to All. It must reach unto our Enemies and of them to all sorts too not only to those without the pale of the Church who do us little or no hurt even Iews Turks Infidels and Hereticks for whom we pray once a year in our English Liturgy but to our Crueller sort of Enemies within the Church our particular Persecutors and Slanderers for whom we pray in our Liturgy three times a week Sect. 9. Indeed the Hypocrites of the Synagogue did constrain the word Neighbor to signifie nothing but a Friend esteeming it Godliness and Zeal to hate an Enemy And some there are even in Christendom who feigning God from all Eternity to have hated more than he lov'd think they acquit themselves fairly and look upon it in themselves as a God-like property if they are much less inclinable to Love than Hatred They know they need not love more than the Saviour of the world was pleas'd to dye for and easily taking it for granted that he dyed only for some they think they need not exhibit their love to all Sect. 10. Such men must be minded that even our Enemies are to be treated as one sort of friends and that the Scripture-word Neighbor extends to both 'T was so extended even by Moses and so by Solomon if by Moses and Solomon much more by Christ who having first commanded us to love our Enemies to bless them that curse us to oblige them that hate us and to pray for them that are spiteful to us gives us his reason in these words because God also is kind to the unthankful and to the evil Which is as much as to say that in the Extension of our kindness we must be Imitators of God For so he tells us in the very next words be ye merciful as your Father in Heaven is merciful And when a Jew askt the Question Who is my Neighbor Our Saviour answer'd him by the Parable of a Iew and a Samaritan not of a Iew and a Iew. Whereby we are given to understand that all are our Neighbors who stand in Need. Let that need be what it will a need of our Pardon or of our Purse we must not only forgive them in case they reduce us to want of Bread but we must give them our Bread too in case they want it We must pray for them and pity them and labour to melt them to reconcilement must do them all the good offices within our power excepting such as are apt to hurt them we must shew them such favours as may help to raise them out of the Pit not such as may sink them the faster in we must not be so rudely civil so discourteously complaisant as to suffer their sins to be upon them without disturbance but must rather oblige them with our rebukes lest for want of such favours they go down quietly to destruction For so runs the precept Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thy heart on the contrary thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy brother and shalt not suffer Sin upon him Although a man be so scandalous as to be shut out of our company by the direction of the Apostle yet the same Apostle tells us we must not count him as an Enemy but admonish him as a Brother 2 Thes. 3. 15. Sect. 11. And from hence we
47. ever attended with obedience 49 50 c. A fire 54. and is according to the fewel on which it feeds 55 56 c. it s proper Touchstone 65 66 c. 71 72 c. more worthy than Faith and hope 85 86. it s other Prerogatives 87 88. in what degree it is due to Christ 93 94. the several means of attaining that pitch of Love to Christ Iesus which is required 108 109 c. examples of it in Paul and Magdalene 113 114 115. in God himself 116 117. what begins in the flesh may be perfected in the spirit 125. unites and inebriates 127 128 129. of man to man 131 132 c. 141 c. M Magdalen her love to Christ 114 115 c. Man as man does love vertue 8 9. Martyrdom how it may stand with prosperity 97. Mercy how it yields the most profit to shew it unto others 34 35. Method of great Moment in Christian practice 107 108 109. N Nature its good inclinations even in its state of depravation 8. how far it is able to work with grace 104 105 106 107. O Obedience pleasant and a reward unto it self 18 19 20 c. 't was every thing to David by which he could be made happy 21 22. c. the great condition on which the promises are made 25 c. the one infallible proof of Love 38 39 c. 73 74. the art of getting it 80 81. it must be Impartial and Universal 82 94 95. Orthodoxy nothing worth without obedience 73 74 95. P Perseverance its necessity 76 77. Persecution how to sweeten it 82 83. how it reigns amongst Christians 156 157. Pleasures the greatest are the most innocent 19 20 62 63 64. Poverty a Preference due to it 163 164 165. Prayer how to make it most infallibly effectual 25 26 c. 124. Preaching to whom of no use 102 103. to whom useful 104 105. Promises the greatest that Christ could make 26 27. not absolute but conditional 28 29 77. Prosperity how reconcilable with sufferings 97. 98. R Rebellion the greatest Tyrant 23. Redemption universal 141. 142. S Salvation its Requisites 1 Introd Sect. 2. p. 10. 75. 76. Security the disease of most Christians 1 Introd Sect. 1. its danger 69. 70. 102. 103. Self-love its mischievous effects 57. how commonly more than our Love to God 125. 126. Self-denial how to be learnt 60. 61. c. how â—… supplies the place of Martyrdom 97. 98. Shame how subservient to Love p. 3. 4. c. 9. 47. 48. 60. 115. 118. 119. 120. 126. Sin what pains we take to make it seem lovely 56. 57. Sincerity the great Requisite of Love 146. V Virtue of greatest Sensuality 19. 61. 62. c. W Will how God works on it not as on agents meerly Natural 43. 44. c. How it works with God 104. 105. 106. 107. 124. World how to wean our selves from it 59. 60. 61. 108. 109. c. Imprimatur Tho. Tomkyns R. Rmo. in Christo Patri ac Domino Dno Gilberto divinâ Providentiâ Archi-Episc Cantuar. à sac dom Ex Aedib Lambethanis Martii 13. 1669. THE INTRODUCTION TO The First Part. Sect. 1. AS nothing is easier to a Christian than the gross knowledge of his Duty so there is nothing more difficult than a just Decorum in the Performance And this is certainly the reason that though the Kingdom of Grace hath been found by many who never sought it yet the Kingdom of Glory hath been sought by more who never found it It being the custom of most Professors in their Spiritual Travels only to gaze with greedy eyes on their Iourneys end without Employing their Indeavonrs to hit the way Like some of Those under the Pole in an half years night who have in storie been so blinded at the return of the Sun as not to see their way towards him we behold the glorious Promises of our exalted Sun of Righteousness with both our eyes but are so dazl'd with their Brightness as in comparison of Them to have scarce a glimmering of his Precepts We look on the other side our Work we are so Partially Supinely taken up with our Wages and do so sasten our Sanguin memories upon Christs love to us that we forget the great Requisites of ours to Him Whilst God is speaking from mount Gerizim we listen to him with willing Ears But are as deaf as any Adders when he calls to us from mount Sinai Our Saviour is welcom to us still in his Priestly office which is to Bless us but in his Kingly which is to Rule us he finds a different entertainment Every man hath his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or naked Appetite of the End but cares not greatly for the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Consultation about the Means We would arrive at our Haven but not encounter with the Tempest preserve our Vessel but not cast away our Fraught pass over into Canaan but not through the Wilderness or the Red-sea Dye the Death of the Righteous we would all by all means but without either the care or the pains to live like him And would gladly ly with Lazarus in Abraham's bosom but are contented that the Dogs should have the licking of his Sores We love to put a misconstruction on several Articles of our Creed and take the Captain of our Salvation to have sinally so subdued our Ghostly enemy as to have left for his Souldiers no harder Task than the easy Injoyment of the Spoyl As if the Apostle had exhorted us to follow Christ without the Camp not to Fight but Triumph not to strive for the Masterie but supinely to receive it Sect. 2. Whereas it ought to be remember'd that as the way which leads to Heaven is both narrow and Incumber'd which the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 does well import So the Gate that opens to it is Low and streight And being so it admits not of all Promiscuous comers but as Low of such as are Lowly and as streight of such as are Slender The Ambitious man therefore has too much stature and the Worldling has too much Bulk Through the one they are too high and through the other too unweildy They would Both enter in but upon their own Termes For the first would not be Lower nor the second Less Not at all laying to heart what our Lord himself has told us in his Sermon upon the Mount that Bliss and Glory are for the Meek and the Poor in Spirit for them that mourn and are merciful for them that make Peace and are Pure in heart for them that even hunger and thirst after Righteousness and for them that suffer hardship for Righteousness sake that is to say in fewer words for them alone that Love Christ and that keep his Commandments When he compares the Kingdom of Heaven unto a Treasure hid in a Field though perhaps it may be found for little or no Cost at all yet he
tells us that all must be sold to buy it Mat. 13. 44 Whatsoever that Treasure shall stand us in be it our Pleasures or Reputations be it our Livelyhoods or our Lives 't is plain the Master of the Treasure is still to have his own Asking and if we resolve upon the Iewel we must not stand upon the Price When our Master does vouchsafe to liken himself unto a Merchant and Eternity in a Parable is put to sale Love and Obedience are the two Talents wherewith Eternity is to be Purchac't Not that the Iewel is worth so little but the Merchant exacts no more That is to say without a parable Love and Obedience are the Conditions on which the Promises are made And obedience is the Criterion by which alone we are enabled to know our Love So that as soon as a wealthy Ruler put this Question to our Saviour What shall I do that I may inherit Eternal life our Saviour gave him this in answer If thou wilt enter into life keep the Commandments And no sooner had He made this glorious Promise to his Disciples That he would give them whatsoever they should ask in his name but straight he added the Condition which was the way to its Attainment If ye love me keep my Commandments Sect. 3. Which words though they are few are so full of matter that here is hardly any word which is not weighty and emphatical and hardly an Emphasis on a word which affords not matter of Meditation Let us put our first Emphasis upon the Particle If a conjunction conditional For 't is not Peremptorily said my Love to you hath been so great and my Favours to you so many as that ye cannot choose but love me or ye must love me of necessity but the Proposal is ex hypothesi Our Saviour does not say Because but If ye love me thereby making it a question whether we love him or love him not And this deserves to be the Subject of no small Trouble or Humiliation whilst we pretend to be the Followers and Friends of Christ that we should be of such barbarous and inhuman dispositions as to be able to be cold in our affection towards Him who is inflamed towards us in His affection A second Emphasis is to be put on the Pronoun me If ye love me keep my Commandments One would have thought he should have said If ye love your own selves if ye love your own souls if ye will escape the Payns of Hell or if ye will attain the Ioyes of Heaven and so if ye love your own Interest keep my Commandments For what is it to Him whether we keep them or keep them not He is not the better for our obedience and sure our Rebellions can much less hurt him Hath He need of our Salvation to make him happy no no more can our Injoyments improve his Bliss than can our Miseries interrupt it And yet he saith if ye love me keep my Commandments From whence ariseth this second Inference That the greatest expression of our Lords love to us is his taking it as a kindness that we be kind unto Our selves that we will love him at least so well as to do our selves good that we will not once meddle with that which hurts us but let miserie alone and apply our selves wholly to do those things wherein our only true happiness must needs Consist Let us put a third Emphasis upon the keeping of his Commandments as that relates in this place to the supposed Love we bear him And let this our third Emphasis be subdivided into three For it will easily afford us a threefold Importance of the words and thence will follow a threefold Inference First the words may be thus pronounced If ye love me if ye have any the least affection or kindness for me do so much as observe what I have appointed you to Perform And this is as if the words were spoken in the Optative mood O that ye were wise that ye knew those things which do belong unto your Peace that ye would but so love me as to keep my Commandments from which Acception of the words the Inference certainly must be this That the best Instance and Expression of our Love to Christ is to do those things which he Injoyns us Or else the words may be accented thus as if indicatively spoken and by way of Asseveration If ye love me in good earnest not in word but in Reality If ye affect me from the Heart and not from the Teeth-outwards ye will be sure to do whatsoever I Command you Your obedience then will be infallible I shall not miss of its Emanations And hence ariseth this other Inference That Love and Obedience in a Christian are two inseparable Companions every whit as inseparable as Hippoclides and Polystratus or as the Parent rather and the Child the Cause and the effect or whatsoever else they are which are Relata secundum esse whereof the one does of necessity infer the other Or the words may be read and expounded thus as being in the Imperative mood If ye love me be sure ye keep my Commandments make it evident that ye love me give me the Proof of your Affection by doing that which I require No other Love will I accept than what does prove its own Truth by the constant keeping of my Commandments From which Acception of the words the Inference cannot but be This That our obedience to the Precepts of Jesus Christ is the only warrantable Touchstone whereby to try and examin the love we bear unto his Person This will teach us what mettle our Love is made of And because by the force of our Love to Christ if it is solid and sincere there is a mutual Cohabitation betwixt Him and Us He in us as our Head and We in Him as his Members this will also become a Rule which cannot possibly deceive us as other Rules are wont to do in what it most of all imports us to labour in without Error even the making of our Calling and Election sure Having thus far proceeded in laying out the several matters in which I think is swallow'd up the whole Importance of the Text I shall begin my Contrivance with the Conjunction Conditional and try how much to our Advantage a word so commonly overlook't may be made to serve CHAP. I. A Question made of our Love to Christ. Sect. 1. INdeed if we never have been Lovers we may hear those words with unconcernment 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 If ye love me But if we are any whit acquainted with what it is to be in love if we have any kind jealousies any Pantings and yernings and gaspings of soul after Him who is the Bridegroom of all our Souls we cannot choose but take it tenderly that the sincerity of our Love should once be question'd When Agabus prophesyed of the Bonds which Paul should suffer at Ierusalem and thereupon
his Friends besought him not to go to that City Paul rebuked his friends for their love to Him as seeming to derogate from his to Christ. What mean ye to weep and to break mine heart I am ready not to be bound only but to dy at Ierusalem for the name of the Lord Iesus Nothing wounded him so deeply as that what was his glory should be the cause of their grief So when our Lord put the Question unto some of his Disciples upon the Cowardize and Falsehood he saw in others will ye also go away they presently gave him such an Answer as imply'd their being wounded in the tenderest part of their Soul Lord to whom should we go thou hast the words of Eternal life Why dost thou kill us with such a Question as seems to scruple at our Loyalty and to derogate from our Love where is he in all the World whom we are able to leave thee for or what is that that we can Covet in exchange for Eternal life Can we be so besotted as to part with our Iewel in hopes of Dirt why then dost thou intimate that it is possible for us to leave thee or possible for us not to love thee or possible for us to love thy absence so again when he ask't no less than three times together Simon Peter lovest thou me Peter was grieved saith the Text because he had said to him the third time lovest thou me and therefore gave him such an Answer three times together as I cannot better express then by this short Paraphrase Lord when thou knowest that I love thee why dost thou ask if I love thee though all should forsake thee yet will not I. My love is stronger than Death it self Why dost thou grieve me with such a Question as wounds the honour of the love that I bear unto thee Sect. 2. Just so when our Saviour does say to us If ye love me keep my Commandments it ought to go somewhat neer us that we should give him any occasion of putting it to us with an If. Were we piously inamour'd with him who is fairer than the children of men did our Souls love Him who is the Lover of Souls in as passionate a manner as he deserves and were we as jealous of the honour of our Fidelity as we ought we would be ready to expostulate in such a case Blessed Lord dost thou by saying If ye love me imply it possible that we do otherwise behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed on us that we should be called the sons of God When we were Bondmen ready to perish not in Aegypt like the Poor Syrian but that other land of darkness even Hell it self it cost him himself to buy our Freedom And is it possible not to love him whilst we believe it to be true that he hath thus loved us and that he loved us first too Can we possibly be able not to love him at the Rebound Observe the force of those words in the best beloved of his Disciples We love him because he loved us first or let us love him because he loved us first For the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 does equally signifie them both It affirms and it exhorts It is at once of the Indicative and of the Subjunctive mood 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 we do love him and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 let us love him and if for no better reason at least for this because he lov'd us when we were Enemies and because he then lov'd us when we deserv'd nothing but hatred Sect. 3. But what a sad thing is this if we shall love him only for that for which the worst sort of men are wont to love one another For if we love them that love us what thank have we saith our Saviour do not even the Publicans the same nay do not the Devils do somewhat like it by being still at agreement amongst themselves never was Satan divided yet against Satan for then his kingdom had not continued It was a witless and foolish calumny rais'd by the Pharisees of our Saviour that he did cast out Devils by Beelzebub the Prince of Devils For the Devils have more wit than to invade each others Rights And is not that a kind of Love by which as by a Bond they are kept together in Peace and Unity for mutual interest and preservation And then what great matter is it if we love Christ for this that he loved us first It is no more than we are tyed to by the law of good nature to return at least a little for the great deal we have receiv'd yet He desires no more of us than that we will pledge him when he begins to us that we afford him what he has bought and deerly paid for and at least that we will love him because he loved us first Now if we have no love to give him or spare him freely we should at least have some to sell him or some to retribute and restore him love for love obedience for obedience patience for patience and blood for blood Seeing the Publicans themselves do love their lovers how much worse must we be if we are no lovers of Him who lov'd us better than his Life Solomon thought it a great expression to say that Love is as strong as Death thereby meaning nothing more than the love of the Bride But the love of the Bridegroom was very much stronger as being that that overcame the sharpness of Death And shall we so much disparage either Him or our selves as to let a Peradventure or an if be made of it whether or no we have attain'd to such a secondary love as may suffice at least to prove us one degree better than Devils Shall we think it is sufficient to serve the turn to make us Competent Christians and good enough that we approve of Christs Innocence and own his Power have no aversion to his goodness and are glad if we can serve him with ease and Pleasure to the Flesh As when we Pray in his Name and make Profession of his word and sing Hosannas to his glory and never deny him but in our works nor ever forsake him but in his sufferings Sect. 4. Nay to shame ourselves yet farther out of the coldness we labour under shall an if be made of our love to Him the love of whom does most conduce to our greatest Interest and Advantage All the Promises in the Context are no more sequels of our obedience than our obedience is the Fruit and effect of Love From whence it follows that on our Love to the Lord Jesus Christ all his great and pretious Promises must needs depend for their performance For if we love him not enough how then can we delight in him And if we cannot delight in Him how much less in his Commandments and if not so how then can we obey him and if not that how then can we hope he
bleeding Innocence of a Saviour than with the Tragical Chimaeras of a Dramatick Poem How great and manifold is the guilt of being niggardly and cold in our love to him whom to love is so easy so advantageous nay whom 't is hard not to love What a sin against nature not to love them that love us What a sin against Reason not to love such an object as we confess is most lovely What a sin against Grace not to love even Him who hath poured out upon us the Spirit of love and so hath offer'd us at least the Grace to love him What a sin against Gratitude not to love Him who so loves us as that he loves to forgive us the scandalous littleness of our Love What a sin to be wanting in love to Him who dyed to expiate our want of love to him What a barbarous sin is it to love him lamely and with indifference who stands knocking at our Door and importunes us to open with much Intreaty and that from morning till midnight until his Head is fill'd with Dew and his locks with the drops of the night what an amazing sin is it and almost incredible to love our Saviour any whitless than we love our sins To have a much weaker love for the Proper object of our love than we are wonted to bestow on the proper object of our Hatred Yet is there any thing more usual than for many not to love Christ who are called Christians and to demonstrate they do not love him by their not keeping his Commandments So very great reason there is to put a strong Emphasis on the Particle If that even the best of us perhaps may call our love into Question whether it is such as will serve the turn whether such as does employ us in the due keeping of the Commandments Sect. 9. And therefore for a conclusion let us thus reckon within our selves That in as much as without Faith it is impossible to please God and seeing no Faith is true but that which worketh by love and seeing no love will prove effectual but that which brings forth obedience to the Commandments of Christ in which respect 't is called fitly the fulfilling of the Law seeing also we must know that Christ is in us or among us which we can very hardly do but by the love we bear to him as well as by the love which he bears to us Shed abroad in our hearts by the holy Ghost which he hath given us And seeing by consequence that our love appears to be one of the greatest Hinges upon which the very Door of our Hope does turn it concerns us as much as Salvation comes to that we raise up our hearts to things invisible and future and that we work up our affections towards the right hand of God where Jesus sitteth and is inthron'd by all the Instruments and Engines to be imagin'd Never must we cease from our work of Faith which is obedience from our labour of love which is Industry and diligence in that obedience from our Patience of Hope which is indurance unto the end in that industrious way of obedience until the Flame of our Affection has burnt up all unclean Fires obstructing the passage 'twixt us and Christ and made its way to Immortality in contempt of all Ifs or Peradventures that it may never more be said If we love him but because we love him and because we cannot but love him we are resolv'd not to be able not to keep his Commandments Sect. 10. For by the Custom of our obedience that I may touch before hand on what will properly be handl'd in other places we shall contract unto our selves so great an easiness to obey that 't will be difficult and hard to be disobedient We shall be ready to object to any masterful temptation what Ioseph did to his tempting Mistress how can we do this great wickedness and sin against God wilful sin will become such a stranger to us we shall so lose its acquaintance by discontinuing to commit it that we shall neither have the heart nor the Face to own it I say by a long and constant practice in the keeping of the Commandments and going on a great while in the path of Righteousness we shall forget the way back to our old Rebellions and shall arrive at an averseness to those enticements with which we were wont to converse with Pleasure Ever saying when we are tempted with the spouse in the Canticles we have cast off our coat how shall we put it on We have washt our feet how shall we defile them An inveterate habit of the soul like such an habit of the Body as it is not quickly gotten so when it is it is hardly lost And as the habit of living wickedly turns our wickedness into our nature that to cease from doing wickedly all things in us must become new so the habit of doing well does so rivet and ingrain the love of Piety in our hearts that 't is well nigh as difficult to raze it out as for a Leopard to change his spots or an Aethiop his skin Is there any among us who has been so accustom'd to any sin as that it has got the dominion over him let him but have the Curiosity to make an obvious experiment for the sole want of which he understands not the pleasures of vertuous living and my life for his it will set him free Let him accustom himself as much to the keeping of the Commandments as he has don unto the Breach and Transgression of them and he will find himself as perfectly an humble servant unto Righteousness as before he was a servant and slave to sin Righteousness will get the Dominion over him 't will Rule and Reign in his mortal body it will so lift up his reason above his Passions and so bring down his Appetite to a subjection under his Will as that the law in his members will but timorously war against the law in his mind He will be passionately in love both with the Burthen and the yoke as with the Beauty and the Love of his master Christ. And like the Bondman in Exodus at the great year of Manumission will rather be bored through the ear than be free from Christ. The Apostles word is He will be a new Creature and even those which heretofore were his most formidable Duties will now at last so become his supream delights that as he will not indure to do the things which he abominates so as little will he be able to abstain from the duties he so much loves Thus at last he will be brought into that blessed disability of wilful sinning of which S. Iohn speaks in his first Epistle He that is born of God sinneth not neither can he saith the Apostle and that because he is born of God That is he cannot sin wilfully so as still to be regenerate
because he ceaseth to be regenerate by wilful sinning Sins of Ignorance and frailty he cannot free himself from but he cannot being regenerate sin a sin unto Death Cannot indure to live habitually or indulgently in sin For whilst we continue to be regenerate or born of God the love we bear to Christs person will beget such a love of his precepts too as will make the keeping of them at once our Business and our Delight Sect. 11. And until we arrive at this we cannot go beyond Is in the School of Christ but must be held as so many Dunces to the first syllable of the Text. We may say that we love him without the keeping of his Commandments but 't is plain without that we cannot palpably demonstrate or shew our Love We cannot shew it either to Christ or to our Neighbour or so much as to our selves For S. Paul tells us expresly that the salvifick grace of God or the grace which bringeth Salvation doth teach as many as do receive it without resistance to live soberly righteously and godly in this present world But now we cannot do either unless we keep his Commandments because by these we are precisely tyed up to all three And so without the keeping of them we have no love at all For had we a real love to God we should be Godly Had we any to our Neighbour we should be Righteous And did we but truly love our selves we should be Temperate and Sober That is to say had we a solid and sincere love of Christ either consider'd in himself or consider'd in his Members we should not fail in good measure to keep his Commandments For what disparity could there be betwixt our loving and our not loving Christ if it were possible for us to love him without the keeping of his Commandments If they can truly love Christ who still are breaking his Commandments And if they can but love him who are still keeping his Commandments what great difference can there be betwixt love and hatred what difference in the causes when there is none in the effects to make it evident by a plain and familiar Instance 'T is not the least of his Commandments by which he obligeth us to submit our selves to every ordinance of man whether supreme or subordinate 1 Pet. 2. 13. And therefore they who can flatter themselves or others that when they violate this Commandment given by Christ in his Apostle they only violate it in Love to the reformation of his Religion and so Rebell against him in love to the advancement of his Glory or only fight against him in Love to the propagation of his Gospel do speak as absurd a contradiction as if they should say in plainer termes that they hate him in Love that they Persecute him in Love and that in love they cannot indure him And therefore let us resolve upon the keeping of his Commandments that so we may be sure we love him that we may love him without an If that we may not fail to love him with such a love as is undisputable Sect. 12. For this is one of the chiefest reasons why he exacteth our obedience even because our obedience is the strongest Argument of our Love Could we love him without Obedience he would not be so much offended as now he is with our Rebellions That which most of all wounds him is our unkindness and this for our sakes a great deal rather than for his own because our want of kindness to him is only mischievous to our selves It being That without which He is not able to make us Happy And this does prompt me to descend to the second Inference which I propos'd CHAP. II. That the greatest expression of Christ's love to us is his taking it as a kindness and as a kindness unto himself that we will be but so wise as to do our selves good that we will not meddle with that which hurts us but let misery alone and apply our selves wholly to do those things in which our only true happiness must needs consist Sect. 1. AS this was one of the great ends of our Saviours coming into the world to make us holy as he is holy and this in order unto the greatest our being happy as he is happy so he is still pressing upon us not to be negligent of the means whereby those ends may be accomplish't And this no doubt must be the reason why having given us his Commandments to hedge us about and to fence us in that so it may be hard for us to fail of bliss he adds to all the rest this one Commandment that for the love we bear to him we will keep his Commandments Not only for the reason which we find given by S. Iohn because his Commandments are not grievous but especially for the reason which we find given by the Psalmist because in keeping of them there is great reward and for the reason which is render'd by God himself because if a man do them he shall live in them or which is most to our purpose because the scope of the Commandments given by Christ under the Gospel is to make us such as He is so farr forth as we are capable both for Righteousness in this world and for Beatitude in the next This must therefore of necessity be the greatest expression of his love for that the reason of his Commanding us to keep his Commandments is not because it is for his interest but only because it is for ours Could we possibly be happy without the keeping of his Commandments he would not press the keeping of them with so much fervour Were there two ways to heaven one by faith and obedience another by faith without obedience the disobedience of our lives would never grieve him He would not so rigidly urge upon us the observation of his Law if Salvation were to be had upon easier Terms For I say he is so urgent to have us keep his Commandments not so simply and precisely that his Commandments may be kept as that by keeping them strictly we may be sav'd Our being saved is the end at least his being glorified in our Salvation of which our keeping the Commandments is but a necessary medium conducing to it Sect. 2. To contemplate the case in some obvious colour let us suppose that a carnal but affectionate Father being about to leave the world as our Saviour then was when he spake these words should give a farewel to his children in such expressions My sons and daughters if ye love me observe those precepts when I am gon which I have many times given whilst present with you Strive to make your selves happy take care of your health preserve your fortunes keep mony in your purses provide for the winter of Adversity hold close together for mutual help and preservation beware of â—â—â—â—â—â—ship take heed of Intemperance do nothing that â—â—y lead you into beggary or sickness into Imprisonment or Bonds
but study to live long in ease and safety in peace and plenty in pleasure and prosperity would we not esteem him a very fond Parent and extremely concern'd in the outward happiness of his children would we not look upon those his last words as the most eminent expressions of his Fatherly care touching the things of this perishing and fading world what then shall we think of our Blessed Saviour who having given us such Commandments as he knew had an aptness to keep us safe and not only so but to make us happy does here intreat us in the words of a dying man that if we love him we will keep his Commandments And what is this but to say in effect and substance If ye love Me be sure to love your own selves Do me this curtesie at least to be but as happy as I would have you Alas in breaking my Commandments ye break your selves and do not That if ye love me If there is any thing in the world which ye will do for my sake do not ruin yourselves forever But for the love ye bear to me keep those Commandments which unless ye duly keep ye cannot keep your own souls Ye cannot keep them I say from the Roaring Lyon who night and day goeth about seeking whom he may devour My Commandments are the Amulets which by being well kept must keep you from him Sect. 3. Now if our Saviour is so affectionate and kind to us as to take it for a kindness that we be kind unto our selves and that we keep his Commandments not at all for his good but intirely for our own why should we either so despise or so hate our own Souls as to be negligent in the keeping of those Commandments for the keeping of which we shall not only be rewarded in time to come but in the keeping of which there is great Reward great Reward even then when 't is attended with Persecutions because they very well consist with our Receiving an hundred-fold now in this present world besides the happiness in reversion which will fall to us in the next There are such secret Retributions of Peace and comfort and Ioy unspeakable conveigh'd by God into the Soul of one who truly loves Christ and duly keeps his Commandments and is under persecution for doing both that our Lord might well joyn the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the present Reward with the present sufferings For in this keeping of his Commandments that Real Godliness does consist whereof S. Paul saith to Timothy that it is profitable for all things And that for this reason because besides its own sweetness which makes it delicious unto all whose Spirits are not so incrassate as to have quite lost their Tast It yields to those that are owners of it often-recurring Praelibations of the glory to be reveal'd For this I humbly conceive to be the meaning of S. Paul when he saith It hath the Promise even of this present life as well as of that which is to come And not only so but 't is profitable besides as to our Bodily injoyments those of meat drink and cloathing so farr forth as they conduce to the solidest comforts of a mans life For t is to these our Lord referrs when he makes this solemn promise unto such as seek first the Kingdom of God and his Righteousness that all these things shall be added to them Added he means in measure though not excess Added to satisfie though not to satiate Added for health though not for surseit Added as a Blessing though not as turn'd into a Curse For 't is not the Glutton or the Drunkard But 't is the sober man and Temperate who eats and drinks with the greatest Pleasure And to whom his very meals are not only his Delights but his Duties too And that for this reason Because his palate is uncorrupted and his Appetite undebaucht Which when Gnephacthus the King of Egypt like Epicurus and Eudoxus had found to be true by some Experiments he preferred from thence forwards a Course of Abstinence and Sobriety not as the better habit only but as the greater sensuality For so 't is order'd by our Creator whose wisdom and goodness are in nothing more seen that the Innocentest pleasures upon earth are still the greatest and the most lasting Such as are the high Pleasures of being perfectly in Health which in the Judgment of learned Philo the best Philosopher of the Jews is the most natural effect and reward of Temperance And sure the Pleasures of perfect Health are very much greater than can be known until reveal'd and set off by the paynes of Sickness Now as Temperance under God is the Cause of Health so are all other vertues the Guardians of it Which being Instances or Branches of our obedience to Christs Commands do thus afford us one example of our very great Reward in the keeping of them It is a Paradox I confess to the men of this world that our Christian Service should be its own Recompence that even our work should be one kind of wages and that besides our reward for the keeping of the Commandments it should be over and above our Reward to keep them But as there is hardly any thing false which doth not seem to be true to one or other so there is hardly any thing true which to one sort or other is not seemingly false As Christ himself so the Commandments of Christ are a stumbling block to some and arrant foolishness to others For men of sensual apprehensions cannot discern those felicities which do naturally arise from the constant keeping of the Commandments partly because they do not keep them and so are ignorant of their sweetness for want of tryal partly because they are fleshly minded and so are blind to those things which must be spiritually discern'd Sect. 4. But now besides that we have it in an express text of Scripture that in the keeping of the Commandments there is great Reward Psal. 19. 11. first we can prove it by the experience of excellent persons in holy Scripture Secondly by the promise of Christ himself in the two next verses before my Text. Thirdly by the evidence of such plain Reasons as even the natural man himself will not easily contradict Sect. 5. I cannot begin to prove this from a better Topick than experience nor from a better experience than that of David who hath put it upon Record in the most notable of his Psalms I mean the 119 that of all the good things which were desirable here on earth the very keeping of his Commandments did still afford him a supply Sect. 6. First in the time of his Distress he found it his Comfort and support Unless thy law had been my delight I should have perished in mine affliction It was it seems the only thing that was able to make him outlive his sufferings And agreeably to
so it was in his Accompt their withdrawing themselves from publick Business and refusing the honours of the Court or the Commonwealth Origen answers that they did it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as keeping themselves for a diviner and a more honourable employment For seeing Christ was the Master whom 't was their Pride and their Glory and their Happiness to serve they were most ambitious of that Quality which made them fittest for their obedience Sect. 25. Thus have I shew'd in some particulars how the Goodness of every Action is very sufficient for the Reward too And how obedience to the Commandments were it not itself an abundant Recompense hath enough of Heaven in it to give us happiness without one In so much that our Saviour might well have said not if ye love me but If ye love your own selves keep my Commandments even because the keeping of them can add no otherwise to His than as it makes for Our advantage And having hitherto consider'd our Saviours Precept touching the keeping of his Commandments as the greatest expression of his love to us I am next to consider the keeping of them as the greatest expression of ours to Him And so by consequence am to proceed to the third Inference I propos'd CHAP. III. That as the greatest expression of Christ's Love to us is his taking it as a kindness that we be kind unto ourselves so the greatest expression of ours to him is to do those things which he enjoyn's us Sect. 1. ANd sure the Truth of this Inference will not need much labour to make it evident For all expressions of our Love however many or great in point of number or degree are comprehensively reducible unto one of these Heads either Formal or Real In shew or in substance in word or deed And in respect of these two our Blessed Saviour does distinguish betwixt his flatterers and his Friends We have an example of the former Luke 6. 46. Why call ye me Lord Lord and do not the things that I say We have an example of the later 1 Iohn 15. 14. Ye are my Friends if ye do whatsoever I command you And an example of both together Mat. 21. 28 29 30 31. Where the servant that said he would not go but went is more justified than the other who said he would but went not Our Saviour's flatterers then are they who make Profession of their Love who give him very good words who in their Prayers and Predications breath out nothing less than kindness and Admiration but not proceeding any farther than the bare wording and professing and breathing out of their Affection they cannot challenge a better character than that they love him from the teeth outwards and this because their Expressions are meerly verbal Whereas the Friends of Christ are they who add the Proof of Love to the due Profession study to live by his Example and in obedience to his Commands espowse a Fellowship with his Death and a conformity to his Sufferings are rather for Christ though at the Barr than for a Pilate though on the Bench very much rather for the oppressed than for the persecuting side Which evinceth that their Love must needs be Real and from the Heart because they are sturdily at the cost and the pains to prove it Sect. 2. That this indeed is the difference betwixt the flatterers and Friends of Christ as betwixt a meer verbal and Real Love we have a full confirmation from the words of S. Iohn My little children saith he Let us not love in word neither in Tongue but in Deed and in Truth That is let our Love be without dissimulation let it be legible in our Actions not only audible in our Voice Let us demonstrate our love to Christ by shewing our love unto his Members Nor that by speaking them fair and paying Civility to persons But by opening the Bowels of our compassion to their needs S. Iames in his Epistle hath set it out to the life If a brother or sister saith he be naked and destitute of daily food and one of you say unto him depart in peace be ye warmed and filled but ye give him not those things which are needful to the Body what doth it profit There we have in S. Iames by way of Instance what we found in S. Iohn by way of Advice and Exhortation For he that saith go in Peace be ye Warm or full he expressly is the man that loves in word and in tongue But he that gives those things which are needful to the Body he is properly the man that loves in Deed and in Truth Sect. 3. Now that which is the greatest proof of our Love to Christs Members does carry with it the greatest Proof of our Love to Christ. Who what is don unto his Members does take as don unto Himself He that persecutes and plunders his Fellow-Christian does persecute and plunder his Master Christ. And Christ hath said what he will say to such as these in the Day of Judgment In as much as ye have don it unto one of the least of these ye have don it unto me Mat. 25. 40. So that the reason is very evident why S. Paul sets out our Love as the fulfilling of the Law And summ's up all the Commandments into this one Precept Thou shalt love thy Neighbour as thy self Because the Proof of our obedience to the Commandments of the Law is our doing unto others in Acts of Justice and works of Mercy as we would that others should do to us In a word so very strict is the Connexion betwixt the Love we have to God and our love to one another as well as betwixt the Love of Both and the keeping of the Commandments that S. Iohn sets them down as the Marks and Tokens of one another 1 Iohn 5. 1 2 3. The Love of our Neighbour is a sign of our Love to God v. 1. Our Love to God is a sign that we love our Neighbour v. 2. And our keeping his Commandments is the clearest Diagnostick and Sign of Both. v. 3. Sect. 4. To make it yet more apparent that our Obedience is the best Argument and highest Expression of our Love let us compare the way of reckoning by our Saviour in the Text with that most general way of reckoning which we observe amongst our selves Do we not ever reckon Him the lovingst Subject to his Soveraign whom we find the most exact in keeping the Oath of his Allegiance And who in reverence to his Loyalty despiseth his Livelihood and his Life too Do we not worthily reckon Him the lovingst Son unto his Parents who obey's them in all things without Exception And conforms to their will however cross unto his own Do we not justly reckon Him the lovingst Servant to his Master who goes as soon as he is sent and comes as soon as he is call'd and does exactly as he is bid And does not our Saviour in the Text take the
very same measure of our Affection Does he not send us to our obedience as the manifestation of our Love He does not say If ye love me believe the Truth of my Promises and strongly rely upon my Merits Be sure to honour me with your lipps and call your selves by my Name But If ye love me do the things that I say If ye love me perform my Will If ye love me keep my Commandments Men may talk what they please of their Love to Christ and praise themselves as they do Him as far as words and phrases come to But if they are Lovers of the World and make it their Business to get its Favour if they either defraud or persecute and seek to build their own Greatness upon the Ruins of other men if they are Servers of the Times and lick themselves for that Cause into every shape and have mens persons in admiration because of Advantage they are as far from loving Christ as from keeping his Commandments And so they are as distant from it as Sincerity is from Dissimulation Which may be farther made appear by the Rule of contraries For Sect. 5. That must needs be granted to us as the greatest Expression of our Love the contrary to which is the greatest expression of our Hatred And suppose we hated Christ as much as a Iulian or a Iew could we do him a greater Injury than that of breaking his Commandments we cannot whip him at a post or nail him again unto a cross or thrust a Launce into his Side for which we are not thankworthy because we cannot His Body being out of our reach and lifted up above our malice at the right hand of God But that which is dearest to him on earth is the whole Body of his Commandments Which whosoever breaks wilfully would be as ready to break his bones too had he but Power and Opportunity as well for the one as for the other His Commandments at the worst can be but voluntarily broken And the Devil himself can do no more And yet how many are call'd Christians who do no less Now what are all his Commandments but Exhibitions of his Will And therefore to violate the former what less can it be than to make Head against the later And sure when Christians are Antichristians by living in absolute opposition to the declared will of Christ they do not only labour to put him privately to the Blush but they paradigmatize him and cast a publick disgrace upon him or in the words of the Apostle they even tread him under their feet and put him to an open shame And this being clearly the greatest expression of their Hatred 't is plain the contrary to This is the greatest expression of their Love Sect. 6. Shall I then give you the character of one that truely Loves Christ that we may judge of our selves in relation to him The truest character I can give him is briefly this He who does not so profess and own the Godhead of Christ in words as to deny it in his works with the antient Gnosticks he who does not fall down and worship the Idols and Images of opinion which either Haeresy or Schism would have ingraven within his Head he who takes not his name in vain either by preaching for a pretence or by the Hypocrisy of his Prayers He who breaks not the Sabbath by his preferring Acts of Sacrifice to works of Mercy or by the cheap and easy way of appearing Righteous unto men He who honoureth his parents both publick and private Ecclesiastical and Civil and cannot swallow the least Rebellion though in pretence of the greatest liberty He who commits not any Murder under pretense of an Holy war but is so very far from that as not to be angry with his Neighbour without a just cause and an equal measure he who commits not an Adulterie no not so much as in his eye nor admits of any whoredom with his Inventions He who neither screws himself into another mans Right by secret Fraud nor breaks in upon it by open violence But chooses rather to be defrauded and tamely delivers up his Coat to him that takes his Cloak from him He who instead of being an anxious heaper up against hereafter contents himself with his daily bread and trusts Providence for the morrow He who does not smite his Neighbour no not so much as with the Tongue does not invade his Neighbours Goods no not so much as in his wish but does in all things to others as he would that others should do to him 't is he that truly loves Christ because 't is he that truly keepeth his Commandments Sect. 7. But here perhaps an Antinomian may thus object If the case does stand thus that none can truly love Christ who do not keep his Commandments and that his Friends are they alone who do impartially perform WHATSOEVER he does Command them to use the words of Christ himself Ioh. 15. 14. None by consequence are the Friends and the true lovers of Christ but such an irrational sort of Creatures as Wind and Water For whilst the best men on earth are a kind of Rebels either by doing what he forbids or by omitting what he requires These irrational things are doing WHATSOEVER he Commands them We know the Waters at his Command did very readily drown the world and as readily at his Command did they retreat into their Channels At his Command they stood up and made a Wall of Defence on either side of his People Israel yet at his contrary Command too they over-ran and swallow'd up the Aegyptian Host. When he said unto the Wind which threatned an Hurrican in the sea Peace be still whereupon the wind ceased and there was a great calm Mar. 4. 39. What manner of man is this said his Disciples in a Fright that even the wind and the sea obey him v. 41. Sect. 8. The Answer to this is extreamly obvious For Christ directed those words Ye are my Friends if ye do whatsoever I command you and if ye love me keep my Commandments to Creatures capable of Friendship because indued with a principle of choice and Reason Not only subjects of a natural but of a voluntary obedience an obedience sweetly streaming from the generous Fountains of Love and Gratitude But to the Wind and the Sea he could not speak in such language Because however they were punctual in whatsoever he did command them yet it was not out of choice but out of meer Necessitation And so their punctual obedience was but an Argument of their weakness 'T is true indeed that in respect of our Saviours speaking unto the sea with a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Peace be still we may by a figure at least aver he gave it a Law or a Commandment And in as much as that sea did do exactly as he had bid it we may figuratively call it the sea 's obedience But in as much as our blessed Saviour did bring to
pass what he Commanded by power perfectly irresistible and that the sea could not possibly noâ—… have don what it did it did rather not resist than obey the precept For the sea in that calm was meerly passive And by an usual Catachrésis was said to do what in propriety of speech it did only suffer Sect. 9. Yet I shall venture to draw a motive to our Obedience by way of choice from the obedience of other Creatures which is by way of Necessity because I find it the very method which God himself is pleas'd to use whilst he is preaching to a Rebellious revolting people Ier. 5. 22 23. For there he presseth them to obedience from the consideration of the sea which though unweildy and impetuous and apt to be gadding of itself is yet so bound and bridl'd up by the Command of its Creator as that it never transgresseth in any kind Now what Reason is there assignable why we are abler to rebel than the mighty Ocean 't is not sure that we are stronger much less is it that God is weaker in reference to us than he is to It. The reason therefore must be taken from the condition of our Wills and from the different operations which God exerteth upon us and Inferiour creatures On us he worketh by his Grace in such a competent kind of measure as that he leaves us a possibility either to use or to abuse it On Them he worketh by his Omnipotence in such an over-ruling and compulsatory way as to make their obedience become their Nature If God should operate upon us by the same Almightiness by which he placed the sand for the bound of the Sea and by which he is able to subdue all things unto Himself one of these two Absurdities would unavoidably follow from it Either first that 't is as impossible for men to violate God's Law as for the sea to expatiate beyond the Bounds which he hath set it or that secondly 't is as easy for the sea to break forth beyond its Bounds as for a man to be a Sinner or a Transgressor of the Law But because these two are most insufferable Absurdities it therefore follows of necessity that God works otherwise upon us than he does upon irrational and senseless Creatures On them by power irresistible on us by a moral persuasion only which may strongly incline but not inforce us Nor can any reason be given excepting only this one why men and women who are indued with so much Reason and Education should shew themselves more unruly than the Fire or the whirlwind with which 't is acted than the sea or the Tempest wherewith 't is driven Never was it once heard that God did utter any such wishes O that the sea had been obedient O that the wind had not revolted O that the fire had don exactly as I commanded For these did never disobey the Absolute will of their Creator But God is oftentimes wishing throughout the Scriptures O that there were such an heart in them that they would fear me and keep all my Commandments always O that they were wise that they understood this that they would consider their later end The reason is because we fail in our obedience to the conditional Will of God although the grace of God in us does give us Ability to obey Nor do we only find him wishing in relation to the present or future times O that they were wise that they would consider But he hath wishes also which look on what is absolutely pass't O that my people had walked in my wayes O that thou hadst hearkned to my Commandments O that thou hadst known the things that belong unto thy peace which what less can it imply than the sufficiency of Grace with the natural freedom of the Will whereby those Rebels had been inabled before they actually rebell'd to have abstained from those Rebellions For had not Israel once been able to have walk't in God's wayes before the habit which they got of walking only in their own God could never have expressed himself by wishing O that Israel had walked in my wayes For that had been in effect as if his wish had ran thus O that Israel had don what 't was impossible for them to do So as 't is evident even from hence that men do break his Commandments not for want of an ability but will to keep them We want nothing but love to make us as dutiful out of choice as the other Creatures are out of absolute Necessity And 't is our fault we want the Habit because we want not the motives or means of love For not to repeat the means and motives which I have formerly reckon'd up on the like occasion it shall suffice me to say at present that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself as well as by and through Christ reconciling himself unto the world We have the means from without for he hath given us himself to make us love him which why should we not do when he is every way lovely or rather loveliness itself We have the means from within for he hath given us his Grace whereby to love him And though by an argument ab effectu we often prove it not irresistible yet we cannot but confess it to be sufficient because he commandeth us to love him and for the love we bear to him to keep his Commandments Nor does he Command Impossibilities He expecteth not to reap but after the measure that he hath sown The highest pitch of his Commands is that we love him with all our Hearts that is to say with all our might or with the utmost of our Ability And t is certain that we are able to love him as perfectly as we are able because the negative to that would be a flat contradiction And so 't is very sound Logick to say we can love our Saviour because we ought What 't is a duty for us to do is therefore possible to be dâ—…n Sect. 10. Why then do we not love him whilst 't is so evident that we are able And if we do love him as we are able why not give him our obedience as the greatest expression of our love why should the privilege of our Reason make us more lyable to Rebellion and by consequence more unreasonable than that inferiour sort of Creatures which have no reason at all Are those Vassals of the Almighty so wholly addicted to his Commands and shall we who are his children be most averse shall we despise the Riches of his Goodness and Forbearance because he is willing that his Goodness should fairly lead us into Repentance and not that his Omnipotence should dragg us to it Shall we be evil so much the rather because He is good And offend the more boldly because his Grace hath abounded to us Shall we break his Commandments because he hath put it unto our choice and not inforâ—…'t us to keep them against our Wills
is that loves to live a sober and righteous and godly life is most affectionately a servant to the Lord Iesus Christ and does bestow his whole Time in doing the things that he Commands Let the object of our Love be what it will whether God or the World the Flesh or the Spirit still the Rule of the Apostle will be unalterably true That to whom we yield our selves servants to obey His servants we are to whom we obey whether of Sin unto Death or of Obedience unto Righteousness Love is ever so sure to beget obedience that when our Saviour would give a reason why no one man can serve two masters meaning those two call'd God and Mammon he made his reason to stand in this that no one man can love two Masters For either he will hate the one and love the other or will hold to the one and despise the other So that if we love God we shall be sure to hate Mammon and if again we hold to Mammon we shall rebel against God Whereas if it were possible to love them Both it would also be as possible to serve them Both because by the persons whom we love we cannot but love to be employ'd The love of Christ doth constrain us saith our Apostle to his Corinthians And as Christ's love of us so ours of Him doth even press upon us and urge us to keep his Commandments and to do those things which are pleasing in his sight But let us farther make it appear by a fourth way of arguing For Sect. 4. Whatsoever we love the most is either present or absent And as when it is present we most delight in it so whilst it is absent we do long the most after it But the Apostle tells us expresly that whilst at home in the Body we are absent from the Lord for we walk by Faith and not by sight So that if we love Christ we shall long after his presence and if we truly long for it we shall indeavour its attainment And if we indeavour to reach the end there will be nothing more natural than to inquire after the means And finding the means to be obedience we shall undoubtedly obey The Helkesaitae prov'd nothing but that themselves were stupid sinners in conceiving it possible to deny Christ with the Mouth and yet to love him with the Heart For the Heart in a Man like the Spring in a Watch is that that sets all on work both Tongue and Eyes and Hands and Feet too If with the heart a man believeth unto righteousness 't is very certain that with the mouth he will confess unto Salvation He will obey his dear Master in every kind both by speaking and living and dying for him If he is but once mounted on the wing of pure Love he cannot choose but be transported by the wing of desire too and will incessantly be flying in every errand upon which his Beloved shall please to send him Which may once more appear by a fifth way of arguing For Sect. 5. Carnal fear is the greatest and strongest Barr to our Obedience But there is no fear in love perfect love casteth out fear 1 Iohn 4. 18. And as it casteth out fear so it establisheth a Hope too And Hope is evermore a Spur by which we are urged to our Obedience from its expectance of our Reward It was this Love and Hope which made S. Paul follow Christ through every rough passage by sea and land He was so amorous of his Saviour and so piously ambitious of the Glory to be reveal'd that he rejoyc'd in his afflictions and was readier to dye for the name of the Lord Jesus than to fail in any point of yielding Obedience to his Commands Nor is it truer of S. Paul than of all the meanest Souldiers in the Army of Martyrs That neither distress nor persecution nor nakedness nor famin nor peril nor sword nor life nor death nor any other Creature had any power to step in betwixt their Love and their Obedience The reason of it is obvious as t is to say that they were Members of Jesus Christ not only reputed but real members And 't is natural for a member as to love its own Head so to live in Obedience to its Direction Sect. 6. Thus I seem to my self to have made it evident that Love is ever that cause of which Obedience is the most natural and most inseparable effect 'T is still as ready to obey as water is to wet or fire to Burn. Nor can it better be represented than by the nature of that active and subtle Element Knowledge we may say is a kind of light but Love is more properly a sort of Fire and with that when the Heart is once sufficiently inflam'd it cannot but send up those sparks of Zeal and devotion to its Beloved which do inkindle a special Pleasure in doing the things that he commandeth The Psalmists Heart was hot within him so hot that he tells the fire was kindled and though he long held his Peace yet his love did so burn he was not able to suppress it and so at last he spake with his Tongue We may say therefore of Love what the spowse in the Canticles doth say of Iealousie which is but one of Loves Daughters The Coals thereof are Coals of Fire which hath so vehement a Flame that many waters cannot quench it neither can the flouds drown it Love indeed is such a flame as must evaporate or expire or burn out its way through all that labours to keep it in A thing so busie and industrious as that in truth it can no longer be called Love than it is doing somewhat or other in complaisance and compliance with its Beloved Sect 7. Having now passed through the Proof proceed we briefly to the use we are to make of this Inference And first of all let us consider that if Love and Obedience are two inseparable Companions the former as the Cause and this later as the Effect It concerns us as much as our Souls are worth to take a care that our Love be rightly fixt and directed For it transforms us into the Image of whatsoever thing it is that we love the most And according as our object is good or evil It either put 's us upon the noblest or meanest offices in the world If its object is right we are the best sort of men but if it is wrong the worst of monsters It being with love as it is with fire which in proportion to the matter on which it feeds doth send up the sweetest or noysom'st vapours If it feeds on such matter as Grass and Tallow it cannot choose but have a noxious and stinking breath if on Cinnamon and storax it fills the Air with a perfume And just thus it is with the flame of Love If it fixes upon Christ it breaths forth nothing but pure obedience and so abounds with good works which are
a sweet-smelling savour such a sacrifice of Incense as with which God is well pleas'd In which respect alone it is that the Bridegroom in the Canticles is thus exprest to court his spouse How fair is thy love my sister my spouse How much better is it than wine and the smell of thy garments than all spices A garden inclos'd is my sister my spouse Thy plants are an Orchard of Pomgranates with pleasant Fruits Camphire and Spikenard Calamus and Saffron with trees of Frankincense Myrrh and Aloes Thus our Saviour is suppos'd in Solomons elegant Hypotyposis to set out the Graces of his Church and so of every Soul in it espousing Christ for her Bridegroom and his Commandments for her guide Whereas if our Love does fix and feed upon the Creature it seâ—… forth a dangerous and loathsome stench a stench so odious to God Almighty that sin for this reason only is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Scripture which does equally signify what is abominated and stinks Yet in this very mire men of swinish affections delight to wallow For whatsoever 't is we love be it as ugly as the Devil we paint it hansom in our thoughts and blot out all its deformities with our Imaginations and so we love it not as it is but rather as it is disguis'd and sancyed by us And hence it is that we are able to be so passionately in love with some Bosom sins though so much uglier than the Devil that sin alone hath been able to make him ugly For when our Spirits are so unworthy as to ask Counsel of our Flesh our flesh presents it to us as lovely And from that instant forwards we look upon it with a Fleshly that is to say with a Lovers eye And sure the Eye of a Lover sees no defect in its Beloved The blackest Crow in the world is much more doated on by a Crow than whatsoever we can commend in the whitest Turtle But this is only a similitude cannot deserve to be a Proof For we as Sinners do owe to Industry what the Crow does to Nature Being naturally unable to doat on sin as it is sin we are fain to dress it up with some Turtles Feathers And having so don we are fain to use our wits to make ourselves become stupid Speaking no better of sin than this that it has comeliness in its kind and is proportionably hansom and comparatively good too Not good in itself nor good in others but yet the Flesh represents it as good for us Avarice is good to increase our Treasure Ambition is as good to advance our Credit Luxury good to banish Melancholy and Sadness Another mans Avarice is flat Idolatry but our own is Good-husbandry because our own Another mans Knavery deserves a Gallows but when it lyes in our Bosom 't is a most necessary Prudence We hate the Proud and the Aspiring the most that may be whereas in us 't is but Bravery to be Ambitious Another man's Excess is a scandalous Sin whilst our own is but an Argument of the Right which we have to the Creature-comforts Now by what are we betray'd to all these mischiefs but by the meer misapplying of our Affections And what then have we reason to be more afraid of than of setting our Affections upon the Earth We find by evident Experience and in all manner of Cases that such as is our Love such will be our Submissions whether to that which is above or which is infinitely below us 'T is This hath made so many womanish uxorious Husbands so many childish indulgent Parents so very many servile obedient Masters 'T was this made Ahab I do not say the Husband but the Wife of Iezebel and Eli a slave unto both his Sons Herod though a King an humble servant to Herodias Darius though an Emperor meanly gaping upon Apame and Hercules though an Hero submitting tamely to the blowes of a feeble Omphale Nor will it be otherwise with ourselves who are called Christians who having the Earthiness of their Love shall not be able not to stoop to their Idols too If we love Herod as He Herodias we shall keep his Commandments as He did Hers though this be one of his Commandments that we slay our own Infants put to flight the child Iesus and joyn ourselves with a Pilate to plot his Death too But if we love the same Iesus as much as Herod did Herodias we shall obey him as exactly as He did Her For we shall turn the right cheek to him that strikes us on the left To him that takes away our cloak we shall yield our coat also When we do well and are beaten we shall not threaten but intreat We shall lay up our Treasure not in earth but in Heaven And whethersoever Christ calls us to Herod's Court or Pilate's Hall to the Garden or the Cross we shall esteem it our greatest Riches To leave all we have and to follow Him Sect. 8. Seeing therefore 't is so evident that wheresoever there is Love there cannot choose but be obedience and that our obedience cannot choose but be agreeable to our Love our first Indeavour is to be this that we beware what we love And since t is natural for us to love the individuals of our own species who do carry God's Image as well as we and betwixt whom notwithstanding there is very great difference let it be our next Indeavour that we beware whom we love Lastly because we are commanded to love our enemies and therefore more than permitted to love our Friends let it be our third Indeavour that we beware how we love We must love one another or else we cannot love Christ not at least in such sort as to keep his Commandments one of the chief of which is this that we love one another Our love is to abound more and more towards all men especially towards all the houshold of Faith But we must love them in measure not at all in perfection not in such an high pitch as to keep their Commandments without exception We are in some cases oblig'd to call no man Master upon Earth and to obey him that saith be ye not the Servants of men We are to love one another for Christ's sake only and only Christ for his own Now to prevent our being careless whether we love him or love him not or whether so as will suffice for the due keeping of his Commandments Sect. 9. Let us secondly consider the unspeakable danger of our Defect As first the perfect impossibility of ever entring into his Glory without the keeping of his Commandments next the equal impossibility of ever keeping his Commandments whilst we are cold in our Affection to Him or Them One of the chief of his Commandments which he deliver'd to us as Christians and by which we are distinguish't from Iews and Gentiles is love your enemies bless them that curse you do good to them that hate you and
one side and pleasure on the other he hardly knows how to be more voluptuous His Fasting and Praying Mortification and self-denyal Meditation and Solitude are grown agreeable to his Temper and Frame of mind He is gratified by his strictness and very much pleas'd with his Severitieâ—… He is delighted with the thing which carnal Cowards are afraid of and vitious persons cannot indure Has fought so long as a Souldier under the Captain of his Salvation that fighting is one of his Recreations Fighting I mean against the enemies of Christ against the world and the Flesh and the Powers of Hell T is one of the highest of all his Pleasures to be above the Pleasures of Sin and one of his innocent ambitions to tread ambition under his feet All he covets is contentment and all he lusts after is a Dominion over his Flesh. The greatest of his aims is to be victor of all he fights with and the greatest of his victories is that he gets over himself So beneficial is the duty of being habituated in vertue that as I said once before it makes the glorious Work of Grace become a kind of second Nature For as the Love we bear to Christ begets the keeping of his Commandments so does our keeping those Commandments as much improve and cherish in us our love of Christ. We shall not be able to abstain from the love of Christ when there is something in ourselves to which the Nature of Christ himself does hold conformity and agreement and our keeping his Commandments will beget such a conformity It will I say beget in us such an Harmonie with Him as must needs infer in Him an equal Harmonie with us too And wheresoever there is Harmonie there will be Love in things rational As wheresoever there is Love there will be keeping of Commandments Sect. 11. We may know therefore by this whether or no our Hearts deceive us when they make us believe that we love our Saviour And so by consequence 't is a Transition to the fifth and last Inference the Text affords us CHAP. V. That our obedience to the Precepts of Iesus Christ is the only warrantable Touchstone whereby to try and examin the love we bear unto his person And because by the force of our love to Christ there is a mutual Cohabitation 'twixt Him and Us this will also be a Rule which cannot possibly deceive us in what it most of all concerns us to labour in without Error even the making of our Calling and Election sure Sect. 1. AMongst the several sorts of men who are commonly wont to call on the name of Christ and upon whom his name is call'd there are not Two of Ten Thousand who will not challenge him for a Saviour and make Profession of as much Love as if they could prove it by their Obedience But we may say of God himself as of most great men that his admirers are very many but he hath very few Friends It is agreed upon by all that they all ought to love him but 't is agreed upon by all too that of the all who ought to love few do love him as they ought For how many are there of them who do most of all profess to be lovers of him who yet do reckon their very Rebellions amongst the Arguments of their Loyalty and special Tokens of their Affection As if our Lord had said to Them in a direct contrariety to what he said to his Disciples If ye love me break my Commandments Such as are keepers of Christs Commandments with a Belief that 't is the way whereby to enter into life and that in this they are to work out their own Salvation are not allowed a better character than that of good legal and moral men And the good works of such as These are but glittering sins in the opinion of those projectors who are such Niggards as to ingross the work of Redemption to themselves But such as break Christ's Commandments with a Belief that they cannot or need not keep them whilst they can break them so securely as not to fall into a doubt of their being sav'd yea that they ought not so to keep them as of necessity to Salvation these they peremptorily reckon amongst the Vessels of Election And are not they very sufficiently misconceipted of themselves and their love to Christ who rather than acknowledge any want of love to him will ascribe their foulest crimes to the overflowings of their Affection So very easie a thing it is for men to be flatterers of themselves and quite mistaken in their Affections that as they who flung stones at their Heathen God Hermes made no doubt but they did it in pure Devotion so there are Christians who seem to think that they can break Christ's Commandments with every whit as good a zeal as Moses brake the two stones wherein the Commandments were but written And therefore in this consideration it does concern us very neerly to bring our Love to the Touch-stone before we pass it for currant in our esteem We are to follow that advice which S. Paul gave to his Corinthians That we examin our selves whether we be in the Faith and that we try our own selves It being so ordinary a thing for Devils to be transformed into Angels of light and for the worst kind of vices to look like the greatest and fairest vertues that the most talkative Professors of Christian Purity and Knowledge are seldom able to distinguish betwixt Hypocrisy and Love betwixt Attrition and Contrition worldly sorrow and Repentance betwixt Presumption and lively Faith betwixt Security and Assurance or a downright Stupidity and Peace of Conscience which shews the use and the necessity of bringing them all unto the Test that so we may not be in danger to take them for more than they are worth nor persevere in those Habits of which we cannot too soon be stript That we may not overgreedily catch hold on a Fish which will prove in conclusion to be a Scorpion nor please ourselves with an opinion of our great Love to Christ which will be found after Death to have been but a great Dissimulation By what hath hitherto been spoken I do not doubt but 't will be easily agreed by all that men are apt to be mistaken in the nature and measure of their Affections and that by consequence it concerns them to make a Tryal whether their Affections are right or wrong All the difficulty will be how to agree upon the Touch-stone by which the Tryal is to be made And seeing the world is to be divided about the choice of this Touch-stone some liking one thing and some another I think it fit in proportion that I divide my Discourse too Speaking first of the Negative by shewing what it is not and then in the Affirmative by shewing clearly what it is A method the rather to be admitted because to refuse that which is False is in itself of great vertue to discover
evidenc'd by charity and the keeping of the Commandments All agreeable to the words of our Blessed Saviour that men do not gather grapes from Thorns and every Tree is known by its fruit But the fruit of all Graces is the keeping of the Commandments and therefore by that we may know them all Now then let us consider that if the keeping of the Commandments is the true Touchstone of our Love whereby alone we may prove it to be sincere and withal the great Requisite for the making of our Callling and Election sure then is the keeping of the Commandments the sum and upshot of all that is call'd Duty So that when Solomon being penitent turned his Throne into a Pulpit and of a King became a Preacher He was not able with all his wisdom either to teach or to learn either a plainer or higher lesson than Fear God and keep his Commandments For this saith he in the next words is the whole Duty of Man Men may spend their whole lives in inventing Sermons and Systems and other discourses of Divinity both from the Pulpit and from the Press But the sum and conclusion of all is This Fear God and keep his Commandments It concerns us therefore extreamly to make a strict examination whether we find within our selves such a sincere love of Christ as does not only shew it self in our mouths and fancies but especially in our Hearts and our Conversations Such a love as carries with it a ready obedience to his Commands and does by consequence amount unto the whole Duty of Man It being so natural for a Lover to seek the benefit or pleasure and satisfaction of his Beloved by doing that which he desires that obedience and love disobedience and hatred are promiscuously used in holy Scripture For what S. Paul expresseth thus in his Epistle to the Corinthians Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing but the keeping of the Commandments the same S. Paul expresseth thus in his Epistle to the Galatians Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing but Faith which worketh by Love So that Faith is all in all as it worketh by Love And Love is all in all as it brings forth Obedience to the Commandments of Christ. But obedience to his Commandments is all in all as including and supposing both Faith and Love Christianity it self is nothing worth without Faith nor Faith it self without Love nor Love it self without obedience to the Commandments of Christ. For being not kept they must needs be broken And they that break his Commandments are said to hate him as they that keep them are said to love him Exod. 20. 5 6. So the carnal mind of man is called enmity to God Rom. 8. 7. And that for this very reason in the next words following Because it is not subject to the law of God And This may prompt us to descend unto a second consideration that seeing love and obedience disobedience and hatred are terms equivalent put the one for the other in holy Writ then as we hope not to be reckoned amongst the enemies and haters of God in Christ we must employ our utmost study upon the keeping of his Commandments And keep them we must with the greater care because like Porcellane they are of very great worth and the soonest broken Besides which they have a property of being so wholsom or so destructive that whilst we keep them intire they keep us too in our integrity and if we customarily break them they grind us certainly to powder The Prophet David had so smarted by having broken two of the number the one with Bathshebah and the other against Uriah as to have made a new Covenant with God Almighty that if he would teach him once more the way of his statutes he would not fail for the future to keep them whole unto the end And to the end he might keep them the more exactly he laid them up in a sure place wherein the serpents piercing eye should not be able to find them out He lock't them up in a Cabinet of which God only could keep the key For so we have him speaking to God himself Psal. 119. 11. Thy word have I hid within my heart that I might not sin against thee Exactly so did blessed Mary by the sayings of Christ her Son and Lord too which she kept saith the Text and laid them up in her heart After the very same manner let us manifest the love which we bear to Christ and demonstrate the esteem which we pretend to his Commandments first by keeping them in our eyes that we may evermore see and be mindful of them next by fixing them in our Heads that we may rightly apprehend them lastly by hiding them in our Hearts that no thievish lust may deprive us of them Let our love be the ingraver to carve his Commandments in our Souls to carve them in such deep and indelible characters as no kind of Engin or Tool of Satan may be able to efface them or raze them out Are not they bold people who dare be damn'd who take the confidence to sleep amidst the breaches of the Commandments whilst their Calling and Election are not only not ensur'd but even neglected and undervalued as if so cheap and so easie as to be got only by gaping that is by saying Lord Lord or upon any cheaper terms than those of keeping his Commandments Let us religiously beware that we be none of their number And because S. Iames tells us that whosoever will be a Friend of this present world is not only not the Friend but the Enemie of God Tremble we most at those Felicities which are most generally courted Take we heed of nothing more than of our living too much at ease If we are serious lovers of Christ let us not laugh and be merry with them that hate him but rather shut up ourselves in such a solitude and silence as in which we may enjoy him without disturbance or interruption Whenever we suffer in his behalf from our selves or others let this be one of our Rewards that he tells our sighs and counts the number of our attritions puts our Tears into his Bottle and enters our sorrows into his Book Let our Ambition be to please him by all means possible by observing his precepts by accusing our selves before him for any precept unobserv'd by importuning him incessantly for ghostly strength and by thanking him for that which we now injoy by hating our Rebellions already pass't and by making him vowes of new obedience Which Vowes having made let us not fail to pay them all how deerly soever they may cost us Let 's not reckon it enough to be almost-Christians with King Agrippa nor yet with King Saul to give God the Refuse of what we owe him But as we are debtors to him for all so let us not niggardly withhold the least things from him which he expects much
as we are rational and in what Instance can we be rational wherein 't is possible for us to cease from being voluntary Agents It does concern us therefore as such to ask for Grace when it is wanting and to use it when it is granted and again to pray God to increase our Talent and to beware that we receive not his Grace in vain too 2 Cor. 6. 1. And therefore as such we are injoyn'd as well as intreated by S. Paul not to grieve not to resist not to quench the Spirit of God when he begins to kindle in us that love of Christ which he requires plainly intimating unto us that when the Spirit of God is ready to shed abroad in our hearts such a saving love it lyes in us to shut a Casement that is an Eye to open a Dore that is an Ear to yield up a Castle that is a Heart to draw a Curtain that is a Prejudice to put Impediments out of the way and by the assistance of the same Spirit to employ the noble Faculties which God hath given us unto the noblest of the Ends for which he gave them We are able as we are men to presentiate our Saviour within our selves and so to meditate upon Him as we ordinarily do upon other objects we can frame Idaeas of him in our Imaginations and thereby bring him into our Heads by an Intentional Union although the Grace of God alone can unite him really to our Hearts by servent love and Faith unseigned Seeing therefore the Scripture saith in justification of the praemisses That we are Labourers and Workers together with God and again that we are Stewards of the manifold Grace of God and are diligently to look least any man fail of the Grace of God and again that every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labour Let us never cease to labour in the great work of our Salvation till by the help of God's Grace which never fails to work with any who do not fail to work with it we have wrought our selves up to a Love of Christ. Being comparatively neglectful of all other duties until we have throughly attain'd to this We must remember that as our Faith is pre-required to our Love so is our Love to our obedience and our obedience unto our Bliss And we must perfect our Foundation before we build For debile Fundamentum fallit opus the weakness of a Foundation must needs betray the whole strength of a superstructure In vain shall we labour to raise the Fabrick of obedience unless we have a firm love whereupon to build it And therefore first let us be sure of loving Christ in Sincerity before we take upon our selves the effectual keeping of his Commandments And let us use the best engines whereby to screw our Love up to the Pitch requir'd For what we do not much Love we cannot much long for nor can we very much care to espowse the means of its Attainment And therefore in spight of the objection which has an aptness in its Nature to breed a carelesness of our Actions an unconcernment in our end and a contempt of those Assistances which onr Authorized Teachers are wont to yield us let us not cast away the care we ought to have of our Immortality nor be so blinded with the Opinion that all the actions of our Lives were pre-determin'd from Aeternity as thereupon to despair of being the better for our Indeavours and by consequence to resolve never to do our selves any Good But let us labour on the contrary after the Duty of loving Christ for the escaping of the Danger I mean the Curse and the Damnation denounced here to all Persons that love him not And to press this forwards with at least some Hope as well as Ambition of good Success will deserve to be the work of another Chapter CHAP. III. Sect. 1. WHen we are setting about the means which do most of all conduce to our greatest Ends we must be sure of right method as well as of Diligence in our Indeavours And because we are to cease from being Enemies to our Saviour before we can be in a possibility of being denominated his Friends First let us summon-in our Affections which are scatter'd abroad upon the world the love of which S. Iames saith is perfect Enmity with Christ. They that mind earthly things must needs be Enemies to his Cross and being Enemies to his Cross they cannot be Friends unto his Person For the Apostle tells us of such that their end is Destruction The reason of this is very evident For whilst we have Friendship with the world which is Christ's Rival and Competitor our Souls are Adulteresses and Harlots to use the language of S. Iames in the place before cited as being false and disloyal to him who betrothed us to himself and is verbally acknowledg'd to be our Bridegroom Love is evermore so sure to be the Mother of Obedience to whatsoever object it is which is much belov'd that as when we love Christ we will keep His Commandments so when we also love the world we will keep the Commandments of the world to wit the statutes of Omri and all the works of the House of Ahab So that our first labour must be for 't is indeed a great labour to disentangle our Affections to take them off from the things of this tempting world and as it were twisting them all together like the Rayes of the Sun in an Optick Pyramid strive to concenter them so united in the Soveraign Beauty of a Saviour Now one of the proper Engines for this I mean the rescuing of our love from what is worldly and to be seen is to chew and to ruminate long enough in our Thoughts upon this great Truth that even our love of the Body does wholly depend upon the Soul And the titular Beauty of the Flesh must be confessed by the most sensual to lye intirely in the spirit For if we except the sole case of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Herodotus which yet was not love but another thing and that perhaps but a Fable too who ever heard of any Lover fixing his love upon the Body so much as one short minute after the vanishing of the Soul Did the Corinthians court their Lais when nothing was left them but her Body Did Demosthenes take a Iourney in kindness to her when she was dead no there was nothing then desirable besides Forgetfulness and a Grave Nothing then but the Worms was able to covet her Embraces Methinks that this one observable were it as patiently consider'd as it is easily understood should conduce extremely much to the spiritualizing of our Affections For if we love nothing that we can see of our dearest Friends but for the love of somwhat else which cannot possibly be seen what better reason can we give of it than that the Part which is material is arrant Rottenness and Corruption nor only not
us such a love as never was thought upon before much less deliver'd under precept to any Sect or Society of Iewes or Gentiles Had his Commandment been no more than that we love one another it had been old with a witness no doubt I may say as old as Adam But because he added a Sicut Ego that we must love one another even as he hath loved us which was with such a new Love as till he came into the world was never heard of he had reason to call it a New Commandment 'T was said by Moses to the Iewes Thou shalt love thy Neighbour as thy self But our Saviour saith farther that we must love one another even as He hath loved us which was not only as but beyond Himself For his loving us to the Death was in the comparative sense of Scripture to hate his own life for the love he bare us And although S. Iohn saith Brethren I write no New Commandment but an old Commandment which ye had from the Beginning he means no more by that last word than the first Beginning of Christianity which was with the preaching of the Gospel by Iesus Christ. Remember we therefore what Love this is which is the Badge and Cognisance of our profession the mark of difference betwixt the Sheep and the Goats and which is not exacted from Men as Men but from Christians as they are Christians We must not love as They do who corrupt one another as S. Austin speaks with a meerly seditious or schismatical Love nor must we love as they do who only love one another for filthy Lucre much less as They do who love one another for filthy Lust Nor must we love as They do whose love consisteth only in this that they agree in the hatred of some third Party Nor must we only love as they do who love one another as they are Men only that is as they are sociable and civil Creatures But we must love one another as being Lovers of God and as being such whom God loves as being Children of the Highest and younger Brothers of our Redeemer as being all made Consorts of the very same Hope and all Co-heirs of the very same Kingdom Our Love must imitate both the manner and the Degree of Christs Love For we must venture our Lives for the good of others and even in spight of all Dangers which may happen to the Body we must own and propagate and defend the Doctrines of the Gospel which is the utmost we can do for the good of other mens Souls and that which makes us most like a Saviour The Gospel I may say is the Christian School thither it is we go to learn Christ is the Master of it in chief all Christians are School-fellows or Condisciples The Love I have hitherto describ'd is the highest lesson which there is taught Those Titular Christians who do not attain to this Love are so many Dunces and Truants fit to be turn'd out of the School It is indeed an hard Lesson for us to love one another even as Christ hath loved us a Lesson only to be found in the School of Christ. But yet how Difficult soever 't is not impossible to be learn't For God is faithful and expects not to reap but after the measure that he hath sown He will not suffer us to be tempted above what we are able If there is in us a willing mind He accepts according to what we have and not according to what we have not The Grace of Christ is sufficient for us And we can do all things through him that strengthens us And therefore let us not despair of getting the Mastery over our Lesson For we are all 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as S. Paul speaks to the Thessalonians immediatly taught it by God himself Sect. 16. Now the more largely I have discover'd both what it is not and what it is to love one another as Christ requires the fewer words will suffice to make it clear as the Sun at Noon that by this we must be known to be Christs Disciples For such a Love as This is is the fulfilling of the Law So saith the Law-giver himself Matt. 22. 40. and so his principal Apostle Rom. 13. 8 9 10. where he speaks of Love in a Christian as Demosthenes did of Pronunciation in an Orator As if it were not only the first Thing but also the second and the third and so indeed the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the All in All of a Christian. For mark the words of that Apostle whom we cannot accuse of vain or needless Repetition He that loveth another hath fulfilled the Law v. 8. All the Commandments of the Law are comprehended even in this Thou shalt love thy Neighbour as thy self v. 9. Love worketh no evil to his Neighbour therefore Love is the fulfilling of the Law v. 10. Three times in a breath without so much as a Parenthesis love is reckon'd to be the Pandect of all things requisite to make a Saint Sect. 17. Nor let any man say within himself How can this be Since Gods word tells us that so it is And yet I think it is easie to shew you How too For the whole Body of the Law moral doth consist of ten Members which are commonly call'd the Decalogue or ten Commandments of the Law The Lord Jesus hath reduced those Ten to these Two Thou shalt love thy God with all thy Heart And thy Neighbour as thy self On these two Hinges the very Door of Salvation doth clearly turn For on these two Precepts hang all the Law and the Prophets Matt. 22. 40. But S. Paul hath reduced them all to One. For thus he speaks to the Galatians All the Law is fulfilled in one word even in this Thou shalt love thy Neighbour as thy self The reason is because the Love of our Neighbour in the high degree I here speak of does carry along with it the Love of God Either of them saith Austin is inferr'd by either for if we really love God we shall obey him when he commands us to love our Neighbour and if we really love our Neighbour it is for the Love which we bear to God Observe the Logick by which S. Iohn argues both backwards and forwards By this we know we love the Children of God when we love God and keep his Commandments 1 Joh. 5. 2. There he argues from the first Table to the second Now observe how he argues from the second to the first and that two waies both in the Negative and the Affirmative In the Negative thus He that loveth not his Brother whom he hath seen how can he love God whom he hath not seen 1 John 4. 10. He that shutteth up his Bowels of Compassion from his brother how dwelleth the Love of God in him 1 John 3. 17. Again he argues it in the Affirmative We know that we have passed from death unto life if
we love the brethren 1 Joh. 3. 1 4. Hereby we know we are of the Truth and have Confidence towards God if we keep his Commandments And this is his Commandment that we love one another v. 19. to v. 23. Sect. 18. Hence we see it is evident There is not a clearer Demonstration of our loving God with all our hearts than the loving our Neighbour as our selves From whence it follows that every sin must needs argue some want of Love For if against the first Table it is through a want of some love to God And if against the second it must needs be for want of some love to Men. Again it follows on the contrary that where Love is perfect and entire no Commandment can be broken For loving God with all our hearts we shall keep the first Table and loving our Neighbour as our selves we shall not fail to keep the second Sect. 19. What I have shew'd in the Great I can easily shew in the Retail too to wit that Love is the fulfilling of the Law For if we love God as we ought to do we shall certainly have no God but Him Much less shall we worship a Graven Image We shall not lift up his Name in vain Nor shall we fail to keep holy his Holy Dayes And if we love our Neighbour as Christ requires we shall be sure to render to every man his Due And so by consequence we shall honour all our Parents and Superiors whether publick or private Ecclesiastical or Civil Then for the Neighbour who is equal or in any degree inferiour to us we shall be sure not to injure him in any kind From whence it follows we shall not kill for that were to injure him in his Life Nor commit Adultery for that were to injure him in his Wife Nor steal or Plunder for that were to injure him in his Goods Nor bear false Witness for that were to injure him in his good Name And as we shall not thus injure him either in Deed or in Word so if we love him as our selves or as Christ lov'd us we shall not do him any injury no not so much as in our Thoughts we shall not covet or be desirous of any thing that is our Neighbours Thus the four Precepts of the first Table and the six Precepts of the second or if there is any other Precept besides these Ten they all are briefly comprehended in this one word Thou shalt love thy Neighbour as thy self Sect 20. And now I do not doubt but we are all of one mind as touching the Character and Badge by which we may be known to be Christ's Disciples The peculiar Note of Distinction by which we are taken from out the world as it were sever'd and set apart from all exorbitant societies and sorts of men whether their Ring-leaders and Masters are Jews or Gentiles First for the Gentiles we may know the Disciples of Zoroastres by their belief of two gods and Incestuous wedlocks We may know the Disciples of the Brachmans by their unparallel'd self-denials in food and rayment We may know the Disciples of Pythagoras by their Reverence to the numbers of four and seven The Disciples of Plato by their fanciful Idaea's in the concave of the Moon The Disciples of Zeno by their Dreams of Apathie and Fate The Disciples of Mahomet as well by the filthiness of their Paradise as by their desperate Tenet of God's decrees And then for the Iews we may know the Disciples of the Scribes by their Traditional corruptions and Expositions of the Law We may know the Disciples of the Pharisees by their Form of godliness and their appearing righteous unto men We may know the Disciples of the Sadduces by their denial of Providence and dis-belief of the Resurrection We may know the Disciples of the Esseni by their overstrict Sabbatizing The Disciples of the Nazarites by their abstinence from the flesh of all living creatures And the Disciples of the Hemerobaptists by their every day washings from Top to Toe We may know the Disciples of Iohn the Baptist by their remarkable Fastings and other Austerities of Life But by this shall all men know that we are all the Disciples of Iesus Christ If we love one another even as Christ hath loved us CHAP. II. Sect. 1. WHilst I am thinking what proper Lessons we are to draw from Christ's words the words of S. Paul which he writ to Timothy do straight occur to my remembrance All Scripture saith he is by divine Inspiration and is profitable for Doctrin for Reproof for Correction for Instruction in righteousness that the man of God may be furnished unto all good wooks 2 Tim. 3. 16 17. For were there no other Scripture than that which hath given me my present subject I should think it very profitable for each of those ends and think the workman well furnished for every good work Sect. 2. First 't is profitable for Doctrin because it teacheth such as are ignorant the true importance of Christianity which does not consist as some would have it in our being born of godly Parents believing the History of the Gospel making profession of zeal to Christ posting up and down from Sermon to Sermon making many and long prayers or whatsoever is comprehended under the Form of Godliness that is the Image the Picture the Counterfeit of Devotion as the word in the Original does very naturally import 2 Tim. 3. 5. For many profess to know God who in their works deny him And let a mans profession be what it will yet if he acts in contradiction to the Commandments of Christ that very acting is nothing better than a Denial of the Faith And so 't is call'd by the Apostle 1 Tim. 5. 8. Christianity does not consist then in such a sanguin presumption as some call Faith in such a carnal security as some call Hope in such a parcel of fair words as some call Charity in such a worldly sorrow as some call Repentance but it consist's in such a Faith as worketh by Love in such an Hope as does cleanse and purifie in such a Charity as worketh no ill to his Neighbour but is on the contrary the fulfilling of the Law and in such a Repentance as shew's it self by amendment and change of life bringing forth fruits meet for Repentance Whatever some Mockers are wont to say we find by the Tenor of the Gospel that a material part of Godliness is moral honesty The chief ingredients in a Christians life are acts of Iustice and works of Mercy than which there was nothing more conspicuous in the life of Christ. The second Table is the touchstone of our obedience unto the first Our chiefest duty towards God is our duty towards our Neighbour God will have Iustice and Mercy to be perform'd to one another before he accepts of any sacrifice which can be offer'd unto
THE Signal Diagnostick WHEREBY We are to judge of our own Affections And as well of our Present as Future State OR THE LOVE of CHRIST PLANTED Upon the very same TURF on which It once had been Supplanted by The Extreme Love of Sin BEING The substance of several Sermons deliver'd at several Times and Places and now at last met together to make up the Treatise which ensues By Tho. Pierce D. D. LONDON Printed by R. N. for R. Royston Bookseller to the Kings most Excellent Majesty 1670. A Premonition to the Reader HAVING been many times importun'd since the Fire of London both to permit a new Impression of my Sinner Impleaded and to gratifie my Stationer with some Inlargement I could not think of a fitter Subject in relation to the Method I first proposed to my self than that of which I am writing this brief Account My method was avowedly That of the Husbandman in the Parable who does not only think fit to cleanse the fallow ground of the Heart before he sowes it but sowes it throughly when it is clean too And so accordingly having indeavour'd in my first Practical Essay and in hope of God's Blessing on it to weed out of mine own and out of other mens Natures the Love of Sin I was to labour in my second and by the same Blessing of God on which alone we depend for any Proportionable success to Stock the very same ground with the Love of Christ. It being certainly not enough however absolutely needful not to sow among Thorns or meerly to break up the fallow ground but as the same Prophet words it we must sowe in Righteousness to reap in Mercy And to be Positively glorified we must not think it of force sufficient that we be negatively good 'T is vain and fruitless that we endeavour to eradicate out of our hearts the love of our Sins and Sensualities unless it be that our Love of Christ may therein take both the deeper and faster Root And because the Love of Christ does seem as rarely understood as 't is often talk't of we must be taught wherein it lyes and the several wayes of its Attainment To the Knowledge of the First and to the Practice of the Second I have directed both the First and Second Part of my Inlargement As they are now put together I know not at present what more to add besides my humble and hearty Prayers unto the Lord of the Vineyard in which we labour and whose Harvest we are in one sense as well as his Husbandry in the second and his Labourers in a third that whilst we are Plowing what we have fallow and are Planting what we have Plow'd and are Watering what we have Planted He who is said to rain Righteousness will bless our Labours with Increase A Table of Particulars in the SIGNAL DIAGNOSTICK A ANtinomianism an Epidemical disease 1 Introd Sect. 1. its Antidote Sect. 2. its danger pag. 68 69. Aemulation its use p. 113 114 110 120. Affections things indifferent in themselves p. 112 113. Assurance how to be founded p. 75 76 77 129 137. B Beauty even that of the Body does wholly depend upon the Soul p. 109 110. how to behold That above p. 111 112. C Caution to be used about the object and measure of our Love p. 58. Charity see Love Christ how natural to love him p. 7. 8 9 88 89. wherein his love consists most p. 15 16 c. and ours to him p. 41 42. how to make his yoak smooth p. 62 63. as a Bridegroom most apt to melt p. 85 89 90 126. Christians capable of Friendship with Christ p. 24 43 44. their character 41 42 63 64 72 73. their lot 95 96. their characteristic 133 c. 142 143 c. 154 c. Christianity little of it even in Christendom 156 157 c. Commandments the art of making them pleasant 11 12. the keeping of them is the strongest Argument of our Love 13 14. Christ's command to keep them the strongest Proof of his Love 15 16 c. to keep them is a reward 18 19 20 c. the best expression of our love 37 38 c. the Art of keeping them entire 80 81. Conversation of what importance 61 122 123 c. 127. Curse due to them who love not Christ 99 100. Custom how an artificial nature 10 11 61 62 122 123 c. D Danger how made to save us 101. David how he valued the Commandments 20 21 c. 80 81. Decrees the influence on practice which our opinions of them have 102 103. Devils how we may profit by their example 3 4. Disobedience the greatest expression of our hatred 41. Duty how 't is our happiness to do it 31 32. how to make it delightful to us 61 62 c. wherein the whole of it does stand 79. not impossible to be don 112 113. its ease and pleasure 124 125. E Election how to know it and make it sure 74 75 c. Enemies how they are a sort of Friends 142 143. Epicurus and Eudoxus how Proselytes to vertue 61. Excommunication threefold among the Iews 99 100 Experience of vertue apt to make her most converts 19 20 c. 61 62 63 123 124. F Faith how easily mistaken 68 69 c. 74 75. in what sense 't is all in all 79 80. little of it in the world 164. Fear how made wholsom 83. and saving to us 101. Flatterers Christ's distinction 'twixt them and his friends 37 38. how many Christ has and how few true friends 65 66. Friendship instances of its force 138 139. of its counterfeits 140. its ground Religion 145. G God in Christ more endearing than God as God 89 90. Godliness a material part of it is moral honesty 155 c. Goodness how it commands Affection 50 51 72 73. Gospel the Christian school 149. Grace sufficient in them in whom it is not effectual 45 46 104 105 112 113. Gratitude how we should work our selves to it 83. H Happiness Desired by men of all Sects 29 30. wherein it properly does consist 31. how 't is our duty to be happy 32. Heathens a shame to many Christians 158. 165. Heart its deceitfulness 65 66 67 68 c. Humility the greatest honour 34 35. I Jews how they shame Christians by mutual Love 158 165. Industry and Indeavour how conducible to Salvation 104 105 106 107. Infallibility how mistaken 75 76 c. Ingratitude ugly enough to fright us from it self 8 9 47 48. Invisible how to be convers'd with 110 111 124 125. Justice how it yields the greatest pleasure 34 35. K Knowledge how it differs from Love and how many wayes p. 49. L Liberty wherein it really consists 23. 24. Love ever jealous of its repute 2 c. why it ought to be disinteressed 5 6 7. how the fulfilling of the Law 33 149 150 c. wherein it really consists 38 39 c. we have both means and motives to it 46.
pray for them that despightfully use you But how incapable are we of that whilst we are wanting in our love unto Christ himself who is so far from being an enemy to any of us that 't is a kind of a Meiosis to call him Friend Again 't is another of his Commandments that we rejoyce in persecutions that we deny our own selves and that taking up his Cross we do so follow him as to hate our own lives in comparison of Him which though absolutely necessary to our being his Disciples yet how incapable are we of doing unless we love him a great deal better then both our ease and our Pleasures our Reputations and ourselves too And then how highly does it concern us to wean ourselves from this world with whose love the love of Christ is said to be utterly inconsistent Iam. 4. 4. shall we then be verier Babes than our sucking children by being fonder of the world which is a strange and a cruel Nurse than they are ever wont to be of the Mothers Breast from which they draw the very substance and means of Life shall we not wean our selves from the world from whence we suck nothing but Poison and the preparatories of Death by the same Art and Method which we use in the weaning our sucking Infants Is it not a very sad and unexcusable Absurdity that the Tall Parents should go to School to their poor Brat of a span long and yet complain of too hard a lesson That they should lay upon their Infant an heavier burthen than they are willing to bear themselves That the Babe of a year old who is not able to distinguish between a Fish and a Scorpion should be put upon the practice of self-denyal whilst themselves however aged are hardly yet ripe for the doctrin of it An absurdity very shameful but no whit strange because our customary experience that so it is does extenuate the wonder that so it should be And yet as we never can obey Christ until we love him so the true love of Christ can never enter into our Hearts untill the love of this world hath had its Exit Nor can we cease from our love of a tempting world until as children from the Breast we are weaned from it And hence it was that the Cradle became the Pulpit from whence the sucking child preach't to the Prophet David whose choisest learning was to refrain and to keep his soul like as a child that is weaned from his Mother And from this very Topick did God upbraid his people Israel who were rather of years than of discretion to be men Isa. 28. 9 10. For sooner will a Babe who is not weaned from the Breast attain to knowledge than his Parents to Religion being not weaned from the world Now to enable our selves the better for the transforming of our love from the world to Christ Sect. 10. Let us be resolute in the third place to converse with it less and more with him than we are wont For a competent familiarity ingenders love though too much of it begets contempt But Discontinuance breeds coldness and indifferency in our Affections As therefore the way to wean an Infant is to sever him from the Breast whereof the Infant grows careless when sufficiently accustomed to other meat so to wean our selves also from the embraces of the world we must abandon its company and discontinue our Acquaintance and accustom ourselves to another diet that is to say to the law of Christ. And then by being so accustomed we shall be careless if not forgetful of worldly Pleasures and Delights I do the rather crave leave to dwell on this somewhat the longer notwithstanding what I have spoken to the same end and purpose in other places because there are who do impose so great a Fallacy on themselves as to conclude against the pleasures of living strictly meerly from their own want of a due experience A thing of so very great importance that even Eudoxus and Epicurus though the great Patrons of Sensuality did recommend a life of vertue to all their Followers not from a Principle of Piety but Pleasure only Not as the nobler way of life but the more voluptuous The reason is they had try'd both courses and so were Proselytes not to vertue consider'd simply in it self but to the Pleasure and Convenience they met with in it So important a thing it is to make an essay of a method before we rashly conclude against it But how can any man pass a judgment touching Colours and Shapes which he never saw or touching the savour of a dish which he never tasted or touching the happiness of a life of which he never had the Patience to make a tryal Let Christ but have as fair quarter as the God of this world is wont to meet with let the keeping of his Commandments be try'd as much and as farr as the breaches of them and then if the greatest Apolausticks do not subscribe to the delights of a new obedience we may venture to give up our Christian Cause For though the yoke of Christ's Precepts is somewhat rough at the beginning yet there are thousands who can attest that it grows smooth by being worn and much the fitter for our necks too In every thing that can be nam d be it an Art or a Science a Faculty or a Trade we know 't is usage and practice which breeds perfection He who first learns to write or read will find it troublesom to the Flesh which yet by using much and often he will not find inconsistent with ease and pleasure And exactly thus it is in the School of Christ where the very same lesson which is most irksom in the beginning is by use and experience made most delightful We may be wedded to the best things as we are commonly to the worst by such a custom of conversing with them alone as will become an artificial acquir'd Nature For as a sinner when you reprove him for his swearing or drinking or any other vitious Habit will say he is so us'd to it as not to be able to abstain So if a man be as much us'd to the Commandments of Christ and is able to say with David all the day long is my study in them he will not be able to abstain from thrusting his neck into the yoke of his Master Christ. The yoke will keep his Neck so warm he will not dare to leave it off and that for fear of catching so great a cold that is to say so great an Absence of love to Christ as will carry him for warmth to the Fire of Hell If he is askt why he refuseth his partion of velâ—…ptuousness eates the course Bread of Honesty or wears away himself in Meditation and self-denial his answer is he is so us'd to this course of life victorious custom hath so subdned him and conscience keeps him so much in Awe that what with Fear on the
he was purged from his old Sins v. 9. Which is as much as to say that the keeping of the Commandments is all in all for if we keep them we are happy and if we break them we are undon I say we are happy in case we keep them because by keeping them we make our Election sure I do not say we make our selves infallibly sure of our Election and that by ordinary means too without immediate Revelation as an Assembly of Divines have made profession of their Belief For as Faith is a good man's so infallible assurance is God's peculiar And it implyes a contradiction to say a man may be infallible in what he does but yet believe For as infallibity implyes a knowledge in perfection so belief implyes strongly a knowledge only in part that is in some measure a want of knowledge Which infers a fallibility in him that wants it When we say we do believe we shall never fall and that we do believe we are vessels of Election our meaning is we do not doubt it not at all that we cannot or may not err When Adam stood in a state of Innocence he did believe without doubt he should so continue When Lucifer stood in a state of Glory he did not doubt in the least of his being safe But the event does shew plainly in Him and Adam the possibility of their falling before they fell So as long as we stand in a state of Grace and do so love our Saviour as to keep his Commandments we have reason to be confident of our Election but not infallibly assur'd because we are not omniscient yea do not know our own Hearts and cannot tell what a Day or what an hour may bring forth Whilst we are militant here on Earth we do Hope for Heaven but shall then only be sure when we shall take it into possession They who urge S. Peter's words for an infallible assurance 2 Epist. chap. 1. ver 10. where the word is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and notes the sureness of the Election not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 implying assurance in the Elect do prove no more from that Text than that they quite mistake its meaning Not through an Ignorance of the original but a forgetfulness to consult it It may suffice for our comfort that God himself is infallible though we may err And though we know not what we are much less what we shall be yet this we know surely That all the paths of the Lord are Mercy and Truth unto such as keep his Covenant and his Testimonies Psal. 25. 10. We are infallible in our knowledge that God is faithful so as he cannot fail possibly to make good his promise if we shall manfully persevere in our performance of the condition And sure the sum of the Condition is briefly this that we love him so farr as to keep his Comandments Again that this is the Test of our Love to Christ and the means whereby to make our Election sure may be as easily collected from Heb. 6. 10 11 12. Where the Apostle having premis'd the work and labour of their love which they had shew'd to Christ's Name in their ministring to the Saints v. 10. He does immediately desire them to shew the same diligence to the full assurance of Hope unto the end v. 11. And not to be slothful but followers of them who through Faith and Patience inherit the promises v. 12. From which words of the Apostle we are to gather four things First that he does not say infallible but full assurance of Hope Nor is it He but our Translation which saith so much For 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is but a fulness of Hope not at all a full assurance unless by full assurance is mean't a fulness and nothing else Next a diligence is requir'd for the attainment of this Hope and this must be unto the end The promise that we shall reap is on condition that we faint not We must therefore so run that we may obtain Thirdly Our diligence must be shew'd too that men may see it and be the better and glorifie God in our behalf It must be shew'd in a laborious and working Love a Love exhibited to Christ by being employ'd upon his Members The Love of Christ if it is true will be shew'd in this that instead of being idle or empty-handed it hath its work and its labour is ever diligent and industrious in the keeping of his Commands Lastly the promises are not inherited through Faith alone which S. Iames calls a dead and a worthless Faith but through Faith mixt with patience which is not a barren but a fruitful not an idle but working Faith Such as worketh by Love impartial obedience to the Commandments And such as worketh by patience with perseverance unto the end Thus we prove by our obedience the real solidity of our Love and by our Permanency in both make our Calling and Election sure It were easie for me to argue from a very great number of such like Topicks of which the old and new Testament afford much plenty But that the proof of this Doctrin may not keep us too long from the Application I shall conclude with what I find in the 8 th chapter to the Romans And thence the Point I am upon may be irrefragably evicted For they are true lovers of Christ and real vessels of Election to whom there is no condemnation There is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Iesus v. 1. They alone are in Him who walk not after the Flesh but after the Spirit And what other can they be than such as keep his Commandments That this indeed is the evidence of our being in Christ does farther appear by the three Ifs in the 10 11 and 13 verses of that chapter If Christ be in you the Body is dead because of sin but the Spirit is life because of Righteousness And if the Spirit of Him who raised up Iesus from the Dead dwell in you he also shall quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit which dwelleth in you And if ye live after the Flesh ye shall dye but if through the Spirit ye mortifie the Deeds of the Body ye shall live Now by the Deeds of the Body are meant the Breaches of the Commandments And how are they mortified but by obedience We have the same in S. Iohn but a little more plainly Hereby we know that we know him even by keeping his word 1 John 2. 5. He that saith he abideth in Him ought himself also to walk even as he walked v. 6. Now we know that Christ Jesus was so subjected to the Law that that was constantly the Path wherein he walked And when 't is said by S. Paul that the end of the Commandment is charity out of a pure heart and of a good Conscience and Faith unfeigned The Heart is imply'd to be impure the Conscience evil and the Faith but hypocritical which is not
less the greatest which he requires Our obedience unto Christ like Christ's obedience unto the Father must not only be paid to some but to all his Commandments without exception All that Abigail could but say Christ Jesus acted For she desir'd to wash the feet of the servants of her Lord but He de facto did wash the feet of the servants of Himself who yet was their Lord and Davids too So very low went our Saviour in the Active part of his Obedience but his passive was lower yet not only to the Death which is the wages of disobedience but to the Death of the Cross too the worst of Deaths and the most terrible whether we consider its shame or torment By such incomparable Obedience both active and passive did the love of our Saviour express it self And shall not our love to Him express it self in our being clean In the keeping of our selves unspotted from the world Shall we adventure to be the worse for his goodness to us or violate his precepts with peace and comfort because we know he dyed our Sacrifice and is our Advocate with the Father and the propitiation for all our Sins No let us strive against sin though we resist it unto Bloud And resist it so much the rather because obliged to it by Him who is a God ready to pardon If He was prodigal of his life when he could spend it to our advantage why should we niggardly keep our Lives when 't is the thrivingst course to lose them That there is a certain case wherein we may save them to our loss and that again there is a case wherein we may lose them to our advantage is the peremptorie assertion of Christ himself He that will save his life shall lose it and he that will lose his life for my sake the same shall save it Now till we come to this pitch of being able in time of trial to lose a life for Christ's sake we have not satisfied the Text in its full Importance and by consequence till we have we stand in need of being taught from another Topick I mean we ought to be persuaded by seeing the terrors of the Lord or at least to be frighted by them And considering that S. Paul hath comprehended them all at once in that short pandect of Imprecations his dreadful Anathema Maranatha as also considering that the sins by which those Curses are all incurr'd do all arise from this Fountain a most unnatural want of love to the Lord Iesus Christ I cannot think of a fitter Text whereon to continue my Meditations than that Sentence of S. Paul in his first Epistle to the Corinthians If any man love not the Lord Iesus Christ let him be Anathema Maranatha And this I mean shall be the subject of the second part of my Design THE INTRODUCTION TO The Second Part. Sect. 1. AMongst the many obliging Titles which God in reference to Man vouchsafes to take upon Himself there is not any so apt to melt us as that of Eridegroom For whilst in other Relations to us he is the object of our Fear our Adoration our Admiration and the like still in the quality of a Bridegroom all he draws from us is Love And if we weigh the chief ingredients which are prescrib'd to make up and compound a Christian every grain of pure love will go as far as many pounds of our Awe and wonder Faith and Hope are great vertues but Love is greater And that as for many other reasons so in particular also for This that God was never yet said to be Faith or Hope nor is it possible for him to be so but S. Iohn hath said plainly that God is Love And therefore Love of all Graces makes us most to resemble the God that made us 'T is true indeed that Faith and Hope must help to carry us into Heaven But holy Love besides that will keep us company when we are there Our Love indeed shall there be perfected but only perfected into Love that though it shall cease to be incomplete it shall not cease to be it self Whereas our Faith and our Hope shall be for ever don away For that shall dy into experience and so shall this into Fruition Sect. 2. To fear and honour Him that made us is a most acceptable service Mal. 1. 6. But very passionately to love him does please him far beyond both It being absolutely in vain that we do honour him as a Father or that we fear him as a Lord unless we Love him as a Bridegroom who hath betrothed us to Himself Take away Love and Fear hath Torment Or take away Love and Honour degenerates into Hypocrisy Both are servil in themselves until our Love does manumit them and make them free Our Fear and our Honour are only welcom for our Loves sake whereas our sole or single Love is welcome to him for its own Sect. 3. Nor may you think that I have nam'd the utmost privilege of Love above other Graces For Love alone is that Motion or Affection of the Soul by which we render back to God though not ex aequo yet de simili a noble kind of Retaliation If he is Angry we are to Tremble not to be angry with him again If he Commands we must obey and if he censures we must adore him But by no means presume to return the like Nay if he saves us or sets us free we cannot thank him for it in kind we cannot make him a Retribution either of safety or of deliverance But when he condescends to love us we can and must love him without the Arrogance of taking too much upon us For to this very end does he begin to us in Love that though we never can requite yet at least we may pledge him with Love for Love Sect. 4. Again of all the Emanations or Affections of the Soul the Love of God is that alone which carries with it its own Reward I mean a Pleasure and Satisfaction which cannot admit of an allay by either Repentance or Satietie Indeed to love him for somewhat else is to receive no greater Pleasure than somewhat else has the luck to affect us with But to love him for himself is to possess the very end because the object of our Love For the greatest injoyment of such a Lover is still to love what he injoyes Hence it was that S. Austin did argue thus in his Confessions Thou hast commanded me Lord to love thee and dost threaten me with Hell if I love thee not Whereas 't is Hell enough to me that I cannot love thee enough For to love thee as I ought as thou deservest and I desire would be at once the greatest Duty and highest Reward to be imagin'd It would not only be my Task but my Heaven to love thee Sect. 5. Now when Interest and Honour conspire with Pleasure and Satisfaction to make us kind may it not seem a great wonder
over our Hearts This is properly the love of our Lord Iesus Christ. And this again must be considerâ—…d in that degree of perfection wherein 't is taken in the Text. As a love of Christ unto the Death a love which casteth out Fear and such as does not wax cold in the sharpest winter of Tribulation For the curse which here follows seems to relate unto the Gnosticks and to as many of their posterity as should at any time be infected by their opinion Such as were Prodicus and the Adamites and the Sect of the Helkesaitae who were totally for a prosperous not for a persecuted Religion zealous Followers of Christ in Times of Peace but in Times of Persecution Forsakers of him Sect. 2. The sum and upshot of all is this The Love of Christ which is requir'd for the escaping of the Curse is such a Love of his Person as is attended with a Love of his precepts too And such a love of his precepts as shews it self in an Obedience without Exception or Reserve and obedience both active and passive too Nor with respect only to some but in the words of the Psalmist unto all his Commandments Our love of Christ must be set off with a comparative detestation of all below him For if any man come to me saith Christ himself to his Disciples and hate not his Father and Mother and Wife and Children and Brother and Sister yea and his own life also he cannot be my Disciple Luke 14. 26. There we see though we are bound to love our livelihood and our Lives yet we are bound to hate Both in comparison of the Love which we owe to Christ. And that so high a degree of love is indispensably required many parallel words of Christ do put it out of all Question As He that loveth his life shall lose it and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal Whosoever shall deny me before men him will I also deny before my Father which is in Heaven Is any man will come after me let him deny himself and take up his Cross daily and follow me For whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words of him shall the son of man be ashamed when he shall come in his own Glory and in his Fathers and of the holy Angels And when 't is said by the Apostle If we suffer we shall reign it is imply'd we shall not if we do not suffer As therefore he who puts to sea let his design be what it will is to resolve before hand to run the risque of the foulest weather and not to go but to be carried nor so much whither the Pilot shall please to steer him as whither the wind and the waves shall be pleased to drive him so before we do resolve to ingage our selves in Christianity we ought in prudence to make a Reckoning as well of the Price that it will cost us as of the Profit and Advantage 't will bring us in If we conceive that our Reward though yet but future and invisible will yet prove at last an abundant Recompence for whatsoever we can do or suffer here for Christ's sake then resolve we with S. Paul to reckon all things but Dung for the winning of it Ever pressing towards the mark by Mortifications and Self-denials and laying aside the every weight which doth so easily beset us by a fellowship with his sufferings and a conformity to his Death for the Prize of the high Calling of God in Christ Iesus But if on the other side we esteem it too hard a bargain which Christ hath made in the New Testament And that to drink of his deadly Cup will be a bitterer potion than all his Love and his Promises will be able to sweeten then let us never so much as enter into a Covenant with Christ but rather than begin and only begin to do him service fairly leave it unto those who have the patience and the courage to go quite through it He is a mad kind of chapman who makes a contract with Christ for a participation of his Kingdom without resolving upon his Cross too Himself hath told us what 't is like Luke 14. 31. It is just like a King who going to war against another King doth not first sit down and consult whether he be able with Ten thousand to meet him that cometh against him with Twenty thousand For even so saith our Saviour at the 33. verse of that chapter whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath be it his Pleasure his Reputation his livelihood or his life he cannot be my Disciple Sect. 3. Yet let not any man here object against his hope of Salvation and ground of Comfort Infoelix ego sum infausto tempore natus sad and evil is my Condition because I live in good times I cannot possibly be a Martyr for want of a Nero or a Domitian a Dioclesian or a Cromwel whereby to evidence my Love of the Lord Jesus Christ and to exercise my Faith with a fiery Trial. For that I may take him out of the Agony which he possibly may be in whilst he considers how great a Love is indispensably requir'd for the escaping of the Curse which is here denounced any man living however prosperous may be a Confessor or Martyr by a generous Resistance of his Prosperities by being under a persecution he wisely brings upon Himself by destroying his wicked Appetites though dearer to him than his Eyes and by retrenching those darling habitual lusts which are as hardly parted with as his hands and feet Be not therefore like King Polycrates too much afflicted with thy Prosperityes nor like the Emperor Mauritius so much terrified from within for want of Troubles from without as to conclude thy self a Bastard in God's account through a defect of that chastisement which is the character of a Son For if thou usest those Talents of Grace and Reason which God hath given thee thy Ambition may be the Nero whom thou resistest unto Bloud Or thy Avarice the Domitian by whom thou art plagu'd for thy Non-compliance Or thy lust the Dioclesian from whom thou suffer'st for thy Dissents Or thy Cruelty may be the Cromwel whom thou refusest to obey at thy great Expense Wilt thou know by what martyrdom thy Love to Christ may be expressed in Times of Peace and how to suffer for God though never persecuted by men Be but contented with all Events and ever rise with an Appetite from the most warrantable Injoyments Envy no mans preferment nor ambitiously covet to make it Thine pay Obedience to thy Superiours though they may seem never so froward do whatever God bids thee though it shall seem never so hard resist the Dalliance of the Flesh though never so pleasant or Importuning and then in all these together thou art a Martyr of Patience with holy Iob of Abstinence with Daniel
his Mortality He did not groan to be uncloath'd with any desire of being naked but as a necessary condition of being cloathed upon with his House from Heaven It was for this and this only his extreme love of Christ that he did glory in Tribulations that he rejoyced in his Sufferings that he took pleasure in Persecutions and lov'd to bear in his Body the Dying of the Lord Iesus For this alone did S. Iohn embrace his Banishment into Pathmos S. Stephen his very stones and the men that threw them S. Thomas his saw and S. Peter his Crucifixion It was for this that S. Ignatius could bid defiance to salvage Beasts that Anacharsis brake forth with a kind of Triumph into his Tunde and that others being tormented would not let go their Sufferings not so much as accept of such a thing as a Deliverance when they might innocently have had it for taking up For this it was that Mary Magdalen perfum'd the Head of her blessed Lord and kiss't his Feet with the same affection and also wash't them with her Tears and after wip't them with her hair administred to him of her Substance closely follow'd him all along as far as from Galile to Ierusalem from thence to Golgotha and from thence unto his Grave too forgetting the tenderness of her Sex the tedious passages of the way the ghastly presence of the night the waking jealousie of the Elders the barbarous violence of the Guard and being afraid of just nothing unless of not finding Him whom with the pantings of her Soul she did love and long for Would ye know now the reason of so much love to the end it may affect you with somewhat like it She had been a great sinner and He had sav'd her from her Sins She had been seiz'd by seven Devils and her dear Lord had dispossess't her Had had the members of an Harlot which by a more than creative power He had converted into a Temple She had purchac't a place in Hell and He had given her an Inheritance in the Kingdom of Heaven Or to give you the sum of all in our Saviours own words She loved much because much had been forgiven her Now what Marbles rather than Men may we be worthily esteem'd if such Examples as I have nam'd cannot provoke us to aemulation Seeing Christ is our Saviour as well as theirs what should hinder us from loving him as well as they Can we think so hardly of him as to believe he did decree that such as they only should love him did he not love that we should love him as well as S. Peter and S. Paul And did he therefore necessitate our want of kindness Did he accordingly praedetermin the several means of our disaffection or give us any discouragements from being kind Let us expostulate with ourselves as God himself was pleas'd to do with his People Israel Hath Iesus Christ been a wilderness to any of us or have we found him a wither'd Tree which hath not afforded us any Fruit What kind of Iniquity have we ever seen in him Which part of his Covenant hath he not punctually performed Did he ever yet forsake us when we forsook him not first What hath he don unto us and wherein hath he wearied us He desires us if he hath that we will testifie against him Mic. 6. 3. Nay who was ever more belov'd than he was pleas'd to love us For whose sake hath he don better or suffer'd worse than he did for ours Hath he forgiven us lesser sins than Mary Magdalen was forgiven Why then should we requite him with lesser Instances of Affection Or if the Affectionateness of others will not provoke us to aemulation and that we have not any Impatience of coming after them in Loyalty as much as Time yet let us try by a third Indeavour how to make up the defects of the first and second Let us display before our selves the several excellencies of Christ That so if any spark of Love is now discoverable within us we may by the Grace which he hath given us blow it up into a Flame To speak of his Loveliness in Himself would be the business of an Age and therefore must not be set about in this poor Remnant of an Hour But yet a little let us consider his great obligingness to us because the powerfull'st Incentive to Love is Love When Love was suppos'd by the old Poets to have brought down their Gods from Heaven to earth it was the highest flight of fancy their Wits could take whereby to celebrate the vertue and Power of Love But we can say without the help of either a Fable or a Figure that 't was the love of our Souls I mean the love of their safety which made the God of all Glory to bow the Heavens and come down to take upon him not the likeness but the essentials of a man yea to become a man of sorrows an intimate acquaintance with Grief and Miseries and this in the Form of a poor servant yea and in the disguise of a sinner too Sure if the Heavens had not bow'd unto the Scepter of his Love his Love was so strong it must needs have broke them When he reflected upon the Torments he was to suffer soon after for our Injoyment he shew'd the vehemence of his Love by a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 How am I streightn'd how am I press't how am I terrifi'd and pain'd till it be accomplish't He long'd to drink of the cup of Trembling He thirsted after the Potion of Gall and Vinegar He gladly suck't the very dregs of the wine of Gods wrath Not at all for its own sake because 't was bitter for as such it made him wish that the Cup might pass from him but because our Redemption was sweeter to him than any thing else could be bitter by which 't was purchacâ—…t Is not he a rare Physician for skill and kindness and certainly if it be possible more for kindness than for skill who takes no more unto Himself than the Rancidity of the Medicine and leaves his Patient to injoy the pleasant effects of a Recoverie Yet this was perfectly our case with the great Physician of the Soul He took the nauseousness of the Physick which made for the Cure of our Diseases We were desperately sick and He would needs swallow the ugly Pills That we might be purged from our filthiness He would needs drink up the filthy potion Would have the noisomest Ingredients as it were strain'd through His body that we might have nothing to pledge him in but the sweet Restorative of his Bloud Now what can more excite our Love than thus to meditate upon His As there is no better way whereby to keep up our Patience than by looking up to Him who did indure with so much Patience such contradiction of Sinners against himself so is there no better way whereby to keep up our love and to raise it
him to a Feast Luk. 14. from v. 12. to v. 15. where first he adviseth in the Negative When thou makest a Dinner or a Supper call not thy Friends nor thy Brethren neither thy Kinsmen nor thy rich Neighbours lest they also bid thee again and so recompense be made thee From whence we learn That 't is true Courtesie indeed to be afraid of a Requital He is a Mercenary Feaster whose Guests are all Entertainers as apt and able as himself For one rich man to invite another is no more in effect than to make an exchange of good Cheer to commute a Dinner for a Supper and what is that to be esteem'd but a more Gentlemanly Barter A buying and selling of Entertainments Our Saviour therefore goes on to the positive part of his Advice When thou makest a Feast call the poor the maim'd the lame and the blind adding this for a reason because they cannot recompense thee again Which is as much as to say that the noblest motive to our Beneficence should be the poverty of the object on which 't is fastned and the greatest impossibility of the least Requital upon earth It is always more blessed to give than to receive as our Saviours words are written in the Nazarene Gospel but then especially when we give with an assurance of not receiving Yet in this case also the merciful man is a Projector and driving on his own interest bestowing a little here on earth for a large Recompense in Heaven For so saith our Saviour in the next words of that Verse giving the reason of that reason he gave before Thou shalt be recompenced at the Resurrection of the Dead Sect. 10. Here then let us consider When God professeth to be our Debtor for all we give unto the poor and gives us his word for a Repayment and Christ becomes our security that all we lend shall be return'd an hundred fold into our Bosomes what kind of reason can be imagin'd why one Rich man will lend his money unto another for six pounds in the hundred or lay it out in some Trade at most for twenty in the hundred rather than lend it unto the Lord by having pity upon the poor or lay it out upon life eternal whereby he shall not only receive six or twenty in the hundred but exceedingly more than an hundred-fold the very Principal If we inquire into the reason I am afraid we shall find it to be but this that they cannot easily trust God or believe the Scripture or accept of Christ for their security Say we therefore to ourselves as many of us as are Rich That if ever we do expect to be carried by the Angels into Abrahams Bosom we must think our selves obliged to take Lazarus into our own Or admit we may be said to be comparatively poor yet rather than fail of being merciful we must work with our hands the thing that is good that we may have to give to him that needeth S. Pauls own hands did administer to his necessities and not only to his but to theirs also that were with him Act. 20. 43. The strong ought by their labour to support the weak v. 35. Rather than any man should want who is not able to earn his Bread he hath a kind of right to eat it in the sweat of our Brows For there is one sort of poor who are an Honourable Order and Rank of men as being Iure Divino of God's immediate Institution And our Lord himself that Sun of righteousness when he was here in his Hypogoeo was pleas'd to make himself free of that Company did not think it unbecoming him to be the head of that Order For whilst he liv'd he liv'd on Almes Luk. 8. 3. the Fexes were not so poor for they had holes the Fowles of the Aire were not so destitute for they had nests but the Son of man said the Son of man himself had not where to lay his head And then when he was dead he was fain to be buried upon other folks charges Luk. 23. 53 56. We must not therefore neglect the Poor unless we dare reproach our Maker or unless we dare despise that which Christ himself in his person was pleas'd to honour The Infidels provided as well for those of their own Countrey as for those of their own House And S. Paul implyes by the word especially that Christians ought to provide for Both unless they dare be worse than Infidels Sect. 11. But I am not at an end of my Exhortation For in vain do rich men conspire to refresh the Bowels of the poor whilst by envy or Animosity or vexatious Suits at Law they do impoverish the Rich too It is not true Charity they shew to others if they nourish Contention among themselves Men may be liberal to their Vanities bestow a great deal of Riches in Ostentation to the poor and yet be still strangers to Christian charity in case they will not let fall a Suit at Law till they are utterly disenabled to hold it up The wise Disciples of Pythagoras would rather quit their own right in matter of Riches or Honour or worldly greatness than run the hazard of breaking peace in any such carnal considerations Sect. 12. Let every one therefore conjure himself not so much by that common and civil Interest which we have in one Countrey as by that common and sacred Interest which we have in one Christ that all our Contentions from this day forwards may be swallow'd up in this one who shall shew the greatest Zeal and who shall use the best endeavours to keep the unity of the Spirit in the Bond of Peace Let the saying of St. Iames be ever recurring to our Remembrance that to love one another as we love our own selves is to fulfil the Royal Law Jam. 2. 8. If Jesus Christ is a Royal Saviour and if his Law is a Royal Law then all true Christians must needs be Royalists that is obedient to the Precepts of Christ their King Sect. 13. For as subjects to their Soveraign so are Christians bound up to the law of Christ. And as little let us forget that other saying of St. Paul that by one Spirit we are all baptized into one Body whether Jewes or Gentiles bond or free of different Countreys or of the same we have been all made to drink into one Spirit We are the Body of Christ and members in particular Let there be no Schism in the Body But whatsoever things are true whatsoever things are honest whatsoever things are just whatsoever things are pure whatsoever things are lovely whatsoever things are of good Report if there be any vertue if there be any praise if there be any consolation in Christ if any comfort of love if any fellowship of the Spirit if any Bowels and Mercies let us resolve at least to meditate and
to Think on these things And the very God of Peace sanctifie us wholly that the whole of each of us both body soul and spirit may be kept blameless unto the coming of our Lord Iesus Christ. Now unto him who is able to keep us from falling and to raise us when we are down and to present us being risen before the presence of his Glory with exceeding Ioy To the only wise God our Saviour even to God the Father who hath created us in love by his mighty power to God the Son who hath redeemed us in love by his precious Bloud to God the Holy-Ghost who hath prepared us in love by his sanctifying Grace and thereby given us a Pledge of our future Glory to the holy individual and Glorious Trinity three Persons and one God be ascribed by us and by all the world Blessing and Glory and Honour and Power and Wisdom and Thanksgiving from this day forwards for evermore THE END ERRATA'S of the Signal Diagnostick Page 86. line 29. read Jer. 23. 26. Pag. 76. line 11. read 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Pag. 111. line 3. in marg read 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Books Printed since the Fire for R. Royston A Discourse concerning the true Notion of the Lords Supper to which are added two Sermons by R. Cudworth D. D. A Disswasive from Popery in two parts 4 o by Jer. Taylor Lord Bishop of Down and Connor A Friendly Debate between a Conformist and a Non conformist in two parts 8 o. The buckler of State and Iustice against the Design maâ—…ifestly discovered of the Universal Monarchy under the vain Pretext of the Queen of France her Pretensions 8 o The Unreasonableness of the Romanist 〈◊〉 â—…quiring our Communion with the present Romish Câ—…rch 8 o. * Jer. 4. 3. ‖ Jer. 10. 12. Matt. 9. 37. Luke 10. 2. 1 Cor. 3. 9. Jer. 10. 12. 1 Cor. 3. 6 7. * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Philo 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p. 365. Rom. 10. 20. ‖ Luke 13. 24. Deut. 11. 29. Ex. 19. 18 20. Heb. 12. 19 20 * Heb. 13. 13. Mat. 7. 14. Mat. 5. 3 4 c. to verse 12. * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Apollin John 14. 15. I. II. III. 1. 2. 3. * 1 John 3. 24. ‖ John 14. 23. ch 17. 23. * 2 Pet. 1. 10. Acts 21. 12 13. John 6. 67. Verse 6â—… John 21. 17. 1 John 3. 1. 1 John 4. 19. Matth. 5. 46. Matth. 12. 24. Cant. 8. 6. * Acts 5. 31. Eph. 5. 29 30. * Rev. 3. 20. Cantic 5. 2. ‖ Heb. 11. 6. * Gal. 5. 6. ‖ Matt. 7. 22 24 26. John 14 21 23 24. * Rom. 13. 10. ‖ 2 Cor. 13. 5. * John 14. 23. ch 17. 23. 1 John 3. 24. ‖ Heb. 12. 2. * 1 Thes. 1. 3. Cant. 5 3. Jer. 13. 23. Rom. 6. 12 14. chap. 7. 23. Exod. 21. 6. 2 Cor. 5. 17. 1. John 3. 9. Tit. 2. 12. 1 John 5. 3. Psal. 19. 11. Levit. 18. 5. Ezek. 20. 11. * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Philo. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 P. 127. 128. * Est alia in hoc seculo obtemperantibus merces cùm penitùs à nobis evulsis Peccati radicibus caleatoque Mundi Fastu atque edomitâ carnis petulantiâ virtutibus ditamur nihilque non agimus quo ex hominibus Dii efficiamur Folengius in Psalm 19. 11. * Deut. 10. 13. Mat. 10. 30. 1. Tim. 4. 8. * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Philo 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 P. 351. Mat. 6. 31 33. * v. Torquat apud Cic. de Fin. l. 1. 2. Gatakeri Praeloquium quod Antonino Imperatori à se edito praemisit 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Philo 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 P. 769 770. Praeceptum est pythagoricum 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Vide Philonem 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 P. 670. Hinc paradoxa sunt plerumque quae docent Pythagorai sc. exules esse qui in mediâ urbe Magistratûs obeunt è contrà Divitlis scatentem Egenum esse vice versâ Psal. 119. 92. verse 19. * verse 50. verse 99. 100. verse 14. 16. 20. 97. 131. 143. verse 3. 162. 72. verse 80. verse 32. Amicitia est inter pares 1 John 3. 24. * Joh. 14. 13 14 John 15. 7. John 16. 23. ‖ 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Arist. Eth. * Matth. 7. 2. * Sinner Impleaded part 1. ch 1. Sect. 6. Luk. 10. 40 41. Rom. 13. 8. 9 10. Gal. 5. 14. 2 Cor. 6. 10. 1 John 3. 18. verse 17. Jam. 2. 15. 16. Rom. 13. 9 10. Heb. 6. 6. ch 10. v. 29. Mark 4. 39. 1 Cor. 15. Deut. 5. 29. Deut. 32. 39. Psal. 81. 13. Isa. 48. 18. * Sinner Impleaded part 2. ch 3. Sect. 6 7 8 9 10. 2 Cor. 8. 12. Hoâ—… 11. 4. Rom. 6. 16. Luke 16. 13. â—… Cor. 5. 14. 2 Cor. 5. 6 7. Rom. 10. 10. Rom. â—… Psal. 39. 3. Cant. 8. 6 7. The Application 2 Cor. 2. 15. Eph. 5. 2. Cant. 4. 10 11 12 13 14. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Rev. 21. ult 1 Esdr. 4. 3. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Lucian Matt. 5. 44. Matt. 5. 12. Mark 10. 21. Matt. 16. 24 Luke 14. 26. * Matt. 10. 37 38. Luke 14. 26 27 33. Psa. 1â—… 1. 12 3. * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Aristot. â—…thic l. 10. cap. 1. ‖ Virtutes coluit non tanquam per se bonas sed in quantum aptissimas ad quietè vivendum vel quia vitam tutiorem voluptatem efficiunt pleniorem Nec justitiam censuit per se optubilem sed quia jucunditatem afferret Torquatus apud Cic. de Fin. l. 1. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Epic. apud Laert. l. 10. 2 Cor. 13. 5. Jer. 17. 9. Compare Isa. 5. 20 23. with Jer. 23. 14. 33. a Prov. 30. 12. b Deut. 29. 19. c Job 8. 13 14. d Mic. 3. 11 See the Confession of Faith by the Assembly of Divines ch 18. p. 31. See the Penitent Murderer in the Account of Thomas Parson 2 Thess. 2. 11. Philip. 2. 12. 1 Cor. 7. 9. Confession of Faith chap. 18. Art 2. 3. * 1 Cor. 13. 9 12. * Ubi supra Heb. 11. 11. Heb. 6. 10 1 Cor. 9. Rom. 8. 10 11 13. 1 Tim. 1. 5. Luk. 6. 44. The Application Eccles. 12. 13. 1 Cor. 7. 19. Gal. 5. 6. Psal. 119. 33. Jam. 4. 4. Psal. 56. 8. Mal. 3. 16. Act. 26. 26. 1 Sam. 15. 9. 1 Sam. 25. 41. 1 John 4â—… * Per se placet propter se non requirit causam non Fractum S. Bernard super Cantic Cant. Serm 83. Nam cùm amaâ—… non vult aliud quam amari Id. ibid. Non ad aliud amat Deus nisi ut ametur sciens ipso Amorâ—… Beatos qui se amavâ—… Id. ib. Iussisti ô Domine ut diligam te aut mihi Infernum minariâ—… Sed mihi magnus satis infernus est quod te dignè amare non valâ—…o August Confess l. 10 c. 28 29 30. Quid vitius â—… quaÌ„